The author suggests a new model for interpretation of mystical experience, based on a fruitful combination of cognitive psychology and depth psychology. Offering a rather wide definition of mystical experience, the author then turns to two basic assumptions—a general systems approach and an organismic-holistic view of development. Hans Loewald's analysis of primary process cognition is combined with a multi-dimensional model of cognitive activity called "Interacting Cognitive Subsystems" , presented by John D. Teasdale and Philip J. (...) Barnard. These two complementary theoretical perspectives are applied to the analysis of both historical and contemporary examples of mystical experience, understood as a result of a dialectical interplay between these different coding systems, or the marriage between Ego and Id. (shrink)

This article suggests that themes in Williams’ (2023) analysis of attention and contemplation resonate powerfully with current thinking in cognitive science. By changing how we pay attention, we can change the shape, or underlying configuration, of the heart‐mind. This is the core process in mindfulness and contemplation. The Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS) analysis suggests this involves a shift in the balance between conceptual knowing and holistic‐intuitive knowing.

Although emotion is closely associated with motivation, and interacts with perception, cognition, and action, many conceptualizations still treat emotion as separate from these domains. Here, a comparative/evolutionary anatomy framework is presented to motivate the idea that long-range, distributed circuits involving the midbrain, thalamus, and forebrain are central to emotional processing. It is proposed that emotion can be understood in terms of large-scale network interactions spanning the neuroaxis that form “functionally integrated systems.” At the broadest level, the argument is made that (...) we need to move beyond a Newtonian view of causation to one involving complex systems where bidirectional influences and nonlinearities abound. Therefore, understanding interactions between subsystems and signal integration becomes central to unraveling the organization of the emotional brain. (shrink)

The article explores the interaction of verbal and nonverbal semantic levels in the performance of Christian ritual. The article maps the distinction between theoretical and performative knowledge onto Barnard and Teasdale's Interacting Cognitive Systems model to give a (partial) account of how meaning emerges in ritual participation. With Christian ritual, both know-how and know-that are needed. Above all, it is their interaction that generate the richness of meaning in ritual performance. Three core claims are made. First, many contemporary (...) concepts of ritual have at least one flaw in that they do not grasp the relationality between verbal and nonverbal, wherein both dimensions have a semantic integrity of their own. Second, there is an ideological valuation of the semantic levels. The experiential level is not only meaningful in its own right, but the fundamental ground of spiritual knowing. Third, combining learning styles and kinds of attention can be valuable for eliciting the full semantic richness of ritual participation. (shrink)

This introductory article to the thematic section on “Spiritual Intelligence” sets out the ways in which spiritual intelligence is currently conceptualized. Most prominently, spiritual intelligence is understood as an adaptive intelligence which enables people to develop their values, vision, and capacity for meaning. Questions arise as to whether spiritual intelligence is a distinct form of intelligence, and how to frame it if it is. It is questionable whether psychometric approaches justify concluding there is a distinct spiritual intelligence, and the authors (...) reject any notion of a God spot in the brain specifically dedicated to spiritual intelligence, which is a much more broadly embodied phenomenon. The authors suggest that spiritual intelligence most likely makes use of existing cognitive architecture, though applied in a distinctive way. This article finishes with a brief introduction to the four main articles in this thematic section, which present spiritual intelligence as a kind of participation in transcendent being. The four articles approach the cognitive, embodied, meditative, and ritual aspects of spiritual intelligence as participation. (shrink)

My dissertation establishes the basis for a systematic outlook on the role language plays in human cognition. It is an investigation based on a cognitive conception of language, as opposed to communicative conceptions, viz. those that suppose that language plays no role in cognition. I focus, in Chapter 2, on three paradigmatic theories adopting this perspective, each offering different views on how language contributes to or changes cognition. -/- In Chapter 3, I criticize current views held by dual-process theorists, (...) and I develop a picture of the complex interaction between language and cognition that I deem more plausible by using resources from the literature on the evolution of the faculty of language. Rather than trying to find one general explanation for all cognitive processes, I take seriously the idea that our mind is composed of many subsystems, and that language can interact and modify each in different ways. There is no reason offered in the empirical literature—besides maybe parsimony—that suggest that language has to interact in the same ways with all cognitive processes. Yet, this is seemingly taken for granted, especially within dual-process approaches. -/- On my view, it is a central requirement for a theory of the role of language in cognition to explain how language might have effects, at once, on and within various parts of cognition. In Chapter 4, I explore how this framework can modify how we think about some experiments in psychology, specifically in research on categorization. My idea is that language, once it evolved, changed how some cognitive capacities worked and interacted with each other, but did so in more than one or two ways. Cognitive systems are changed in very different ways—sometimes the transformation is very subtle, such as our way of forming categories by using how similar objects are, while other times it is deep and changes the very way the system works. (shrink)

Mindfulness transforms suffering through changes in what the mind is processing, changes in how the mind is processing it, and changes in the view of what is being processed. The ‘bearing in mind’ aspect of mindfulness is important in understanding these changes, and is discussed in terms of working memory. The Interacting Cognitive Subsystems perspective recognizes two kinds of meaning, one explicit and specific, the other implicit and holistic. We suggest that mindfulness is a configuration of mind (...) in which working memory for holistic implicit meanings plays a central role. It is here that the processing and view of experience are transformed by the creation of new patterns of implicit meaning. This analysis is applied to mindfulness practice, mindfulness as a way of being, the training of instructors and the use of mindfulness with respect to different aspirations. (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)

Living systems employ several mechanisms and behaviors to achieve robustness and maintain themselves under changing internal and external conditions. Regulation stands out from them as a specific form of higher-order control, exerted over the basic regime responsible for the production and maintenance of the organism, and provides the system with the capacity to act on its own constitutive dynamics. It consists in the capability to selectively shift between different available regimes of self-production and self-maintenance in response to specific signals and (...) perturbations, due to the action of a dedicated subsystem which is operationally distinct from the regulated ones. The role of regulation, however, is not exhausted by its contribution to maintain a living system’s viability. While enhancing robustness, regulatory mechanisms play a fundamental role in the realization of an autonomous biological organization. Specifically, they are at the basis of the remarkable integration of biological systems, insofar as they coordinate and modulate the activity of distinct functional subsystems. Moreover, by implementing complex and hierarchically organized control architectures, they allow for an increase in structural and organizational complexity while minimizing fragility. Finally, they endow living systems, from their most basic unicellular instances, with the capability to control their own internal dynamics to adaptively respond to specific features of their interaction with the environment, thus providing the basis for the emergence of minimal forms of cognition. (shrink)

Living systems employ several mechanisms and behaviors to achieve robustness and maintain themselves under changing internal and external conditions. Regulation stands out from them as a specific form of higher-order control, exerted over the basic regime responsible for the production and maintenance of the organism, and provides the system with the capacity to act on its own constitutive dynamics. It consists in the capability to selectively shift between different available regimes of self-production and self-maintenance in response to specific signals and (...) perturbations, due to the action of a dedicated subsystem which is operationally distinct from the regulated ones. The role of regulation, however, is not exhausted by its contribution to maintain a living system’s viability. While enhancing robustness, regulatory mechanisms play a fundamental role in the realization of an autonomous biological organization. Specifically, they are at the basis of the remarkable integration of biological systems, insofar as they coordinate and modulate the activity of distinct functional subsystems. Moreover, by implementing complex and hierarchically organized control architectures, they allow for an increase in structural and organizational complexity while minimizing fragility. Finally, they endow living systems, from their most basic unicellular instances, with the capability to control their own internal dynamics to adaptively respond to specific features of their interaction with the environment, thus providing the basis for the emergence of minimal forms of cognition. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of spiritual intelligence in terms of a natural human ability to take a different perspective on reality rather than an extraordinary ability to engage with a different/supernatural reality. From a cognitive perspective, spiritual intelligence entails a re‐balancing of the two main modes of human cognition, with a prioritization of the holistic‐intuitive mind over the conceptual one. From the psychological and phenomenological perspectives, it involves a different kind of engagement with information: slower, more participatory, less (...) objectifying, and not focused entirely on problem solving. The article ends with a reflection on the theological implications of the proposed model and how such an account of spiritual intelligence as knowing differently might relate to theological anthropology and the theology of the spirit and the spiritual. (shrink)

A survey is presented of possible connections between quantum theory and consciousness that have been proposed in the past and those that have now opened as a result of work on cognitive subsystems of the brain in the past 10 years. It is argued that, in the light of such work and in contrast to speculations prior to it, these connections can now be seen as necessary and their investigation as feasible.

Human cognition is not an island unto itself. As a species, we are not Leibnizian Monads independently engaging in clear, Cartesian thinking. Our minds interact. That's surely why our species has language. And that interactivity probably constrains both what and how we think.

The monograph shows that in the last 50 years theoretical linguistics remains a compendium of mutually contradicting doctrines on multiple levels: the level of general theories of language, the level of its main constituents (the lexicon, syntax, and the lexical-syntactic interface that connects them), and the lower levels of specific linguistic problems (such as lexical polysemy, grammatical meanings, etc.). The contradictions of contemporary linguistic theories are indicative of a deep crisis. Evolutionary-synthetic theory of language is aimed at overcoming this crisis. (...) It implements a multidisciplinary approach that describes the language a) in evolutionary and ontogenetic development and b) in close interaction with other human subsystems: the mental representation of the world, human activity and social interaction. Language is defined as a dual system developing in ontogeny: 'universal sensory sublanguage + ethnically specific functional sublanguage' where the sensory sublanguage is used to describe the 'visible' world (accessible to the senses), and the functional sublanguage is employed to describe the conceivable world ('comprehended by human mind'). Within the framework of the approach presented, many problems are solved: 1) the cognitive (non-verbal) language for representing language meanings; 2) diversity and unity of languages (using the structure alternative to Chomsky's Universal Grammar); 3) the main (original) function of the language; 4) the cognitive language of thought (its basis is the lexical and grammatical meanings of the sensory sublanguage); 5) dual (functionally prototypical) structure of human categories; 6) mechanisms in the early acquisition of lexical and grammatical meanings; 7) the meaning (assignment) of the syntactic structure of a sentence, etc. The book deals with a wide range of issues related to human cognition, glottogenesis and anthropogenesis, universal cognitive structures for the representation of objects, actions and situations, so it will be of interest not only to linguists, but also to psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers. (shrink)

Identifying the physiological processes in the central nervous system that underlie our conscious experiences has been at the forefront of cognitive neuroscience. While the principles of classical physics were long found to be unaccommodating for a causally effective consciousness, the inherent indeterminism of quantum physics, together with its characteristic dichotomy between quantum states and quantum observables, provides a fertile ground for the physical modeling of consciousness. Here, we utilize the Schrödinger equation, together with the Planck-Einstein relation between energy and (...) frequency, in order to determine the appropriate quantum dynamical timescale of conscious processes. Furthermore, with the help of a simple two-qubit toy model we illustrate the importance of non-zero interaction Hamiltonian for the generation of quantum entanglement and manifestation of observable correlations between different measurement outcomes. Employing a quantitative measure of entanglement based on Schmidt decomposition, we show that quantum evolution governed only by internal Hamiltonians for the individual quantum subsystems preserves quantum coherence of separable initial quantum states, but eliminates the possibility of any interaction and quantum entanglement. The presence of non-zero interaction Hamiltonian, however, allows for decoherence of the individual quantum subsystems along with their mutual interaction and quantum entanglement. The presented results show that quantum coherence of individual subsystems cannot be used for cognitive binding because it is a physical mechanism that leads to separability and non-interaction. In contrast, quantum interactions with their associated decoherence of individual subsystems are instrumental for dynamical changes in the quantum entanglement of the composite quantum state vector and manifested correlations of different observable outcomes. Thus, fast decoherence timescales could assist cognitive binding through quantum entanglement across extensive neural networks in the brain cortex. (shrink)

Real-time cognition is continuous in time and contiguous in mental state space. This temporal continuity implies that the majority of mental life is spent in states that are partially consistent with multiple representations. The state-space contiguity implies that different cognitive processes interact in ways that make them quite non-modular. As the evidence for such information-permeability expands to include not just neural subsystems but also the entire brain and even the entire organism, this radical interactionism leads one to hypothesize (...) that mental activity, and perhaps consciousness itself, is something that emerges amid the interface between one's body and one's environment. We portray mental activity as a continuous trajectory through a brain-body-environment state space, where close visitations with labelled attractors may constitute reportable self- consciousness and traversals through unlabeled regions may constitute unutterable immediate conscious awareness. (shrink)

To carry out an ethnographic study on the work process in the sterilization unit of a hospital in Catalonia, we found the socially distributed cognition approaches of Hutchins and Kirsh useful. However, these approaches lack sufficient explanation on three important issues: the pragmatic criteria for identifying and delimiting a relevant unit of analysis and therefore the setting and contexts of the work process; the mechanisms and results of reciprocal influences between these levels of analysis; and the relation between these levels. (...) Therefore, we added several new elements to these approaches, in addition to Layder's model of contexts with some important modifications, with the aim of offering an interactive, cognitive and social proposal of analysis that clarifies these three issues, allowing a more exhaustive and broader empirical analysis that captures better the ‘social’ dimension embedded in the work processes. (shrink)

Information was a frequently used concept in many fields of investigation. However, this concept is still not really understood, when it is referred for instance to consciousness and its informational structure. In this paper it is followed the concept of information from philosophical to physics perspective, showing especially how this concept could be extended to matter in general and to the living in particular, as a result of the intimate interaction between matter and information, the human body appearing as a (...) bipolar informed-matter structure. It is detailed on this way how this concept could be referred to consciousness, and an informational modeling of consciousness as an informational system of the human body is presented. Based on the anatomic architecture of the organism and on the inference of the specific information concepts, it is shown that the informational system of the human body could be described by seven informational subsystems, which are reflected in consciousness as corresponding cognitive centers. These results are able to explain the main properties of consciousness, both the cognitive and extra-cognitive properties of the mind, like that observed during the near-death experiences and other similar phenomena. Moreover, the results of such a modeling are compared with the existing empirical concepts and models on the energetic architecture of the organism, showing their relevance for the understanding of consciousness. (shrink)

A new theoretical model of oncogenesis that incorporates a systemic view of biodynamics was developed and analyzed. According to our model, the emergent behavior at the cell population level is the result of nonlinear interactions between the neoplastic and immune subsystems. Our approach allows subsequent extensions of the model to span multiple levels of biological organization. The model opens the possibility of a flexible connection between the molecular and tissue level descriptions of oncogenesis.

(Part II), "Consciousness" (Part III), "Dreaming" (Part IV), and "Unified Theories of Psychology and Cognition" (Part V), successively.Part I (Chapter 1-3) focuses on the integration of brain, of which neural architectures are regarded as the most reliable empirical basis of mental integration. Tang proposes a theory dubbed Four Functional Systems (FFS) (of the brain) according to four levels of analysis of the hierarchical neural systems. Historically, FFS is in the prospects of extending Alexander Luria's theory of Three Functional Systems (Luria, (...) 1973). The first subsystem makes preparations for potentiation, brain activation, and awareness states; the second one receives, processes, and stores the incoming sensory information; the third one formulates and regulates subsequent mental activities and behaviors; the last one evaluates stored information, then, in turn, generates emotional feelings (as valences). Thus, the complexity of the brain-as an integrated whole-is identical to the brain's quaternary functional systems.Part II (Chapter 4-6) centers on the integration of mind. Tang treats unconscious mental activities as the prerequisites of consciousness. Furthermore, associating with FFS, he points out the mind is involved with four components: arousal, cognition, emotion, and volition (p. 28-30). These components-the tetrads of a mind-are neither operated separately nor combined mechanically. They interact with each other in a self-organizing way.Part III (Chapter 7-12) showcases Tang's theory of consciousness. In Chapter 7, correspondingly, he proposes Four Components of Consciousness (FCC). Consciousness is composed of four elements: awareness, content, intention, and emotion (p. 51). Tang tries to link arousal states of consciousness with energy states of (human) brain anatomical regions. He believes that the interactions of brain regions fundamentally result in those regions' transferable variable states. In particular, based on Fechner's interpretations of external and internal psychophysics, Tang adopts mathematical and physical methods to illustrate consciousness. In his view, consciousness is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon; the emergence of consciousness has a process. Rigorous formulas can describe this process and the relationship between brain and mind (p. 90-95).Part IV (Chapter 13-17) discusses dreaming. Studies have shown that most dreams appear during rapid eye movement. Neurotechnologies, such as electroencephalogram, can record the activation and dynamic changes of different brain regions during dreams, indicating that information processing continues. Information processing occurs during both dreaming and waking states, but the same neural basis corresponds to different characteristics. For dreaming is a unique state of consciousness, understanding the nature of dreaming is of great significance to understanding consciousness.Finally, based on the previous four sections' empirical and theoretical support, Part V (Chapter 18-20) gets ready to construct a unified theory of psychology and cognition. Both psychologists and cognitive scientists aspire to a unified theory of the mind as physicists have expected (simply relatively speaking) in the material realm. Resorting to a general theory of physical and mental integration, Tang plans a Grand Unified Psychology program, whose theoretical framework consists of four parts: (1) central viewpoints and methods of studying psychology and behavioral science; (2) critical examinations of theories in various sub-fields of psychology and somewhat convergent psychological phenomena; (3) essentials of unifying various research fields and disciplines of psychology; (4) essentials of unifying the research diagram. Tang stresses the significance of studying the mind from mental integration (and psychological interaction). Elsewhere, Tang advocates: the processes and phenomena of cognition are only one dimension of the psychological realm; consequently, it is necessary to study different (mental) interactions of psychological experiences and feelings involving cognition, such as understanding, evaluating, monitoring. In short, the units and correlations of various mental interactions involving cognition and feelings are indispensable.Throughout the book, Tang attempts to systematically grasp interdisciplinary advances of physics, psychology, brain science, medicine, technical science, and present his mind and consciousness theory (FFS and FCC). In the end, he offers a sketch of a unified program of psychological and cognitive sciences. This book epitomizes Tang's research on mind, brain, and consciousness over the past two decades and could be seen as the forefront of Chinese scholars' research on consciousness. The only drawback is that the content system it contains is so extensive that some fascinating details, such as experimental studies on mind wandering, quantitative studies of consciousness, cannot be specifically presented. Just as Eric Kandel (2018) stated, "determining the nature of consciousness is one of the greatest scientific challenges of the twenty-first century, so answers will not come quickly or easily," the theories and program proposed by Tang in this book need to be scrutinized further by the contemporaries. (shrink)

This collection of five essays by Germany’s most prominent and influential social thinker both links Luhmann’s social theory to the question “What is modern about modernity?” and shows the origins and context of his theory. In the introductory essay, “Modernity in Contemporary Society,” Luhmann develops the thesis that the modern epistemological situation can be seen as the consequence of a radical change in social macrostructures that he calls “social differentiation,” thereby designating the juxtaposition of and interaction between a growing number (...) of social subsystems without any hierarchical structure. “European Rationality” defines rationality as the capacity to see the difference between systems and their environment as a unity. Luhmann argues that, in a world characterized by contingency, rationality tends to become coextensive with imagination, a view that challenges their classical binary opposition and opens up the possibility of seeing modern rationality as a paradox. In the third essay, “Contingency as Modern Society’s Defining Attribute,” Luhmann develops a further and probably even more important paradox: that the generalization of contingency or cognitive uncertainty is precisely what provides stability within modern societies. In the process, he argues that medieval and early modern theology can be seen as a “preadaptive advance” through which Western thinking prepared itself for the modern epistemological situation. In “Describing the Future,” Luhmann claims that neither the traditional hope of learning from history nor the complementary hope of cognitively anticipating the future can be maintained, and that the classical concept of the future should be replaced by the notion of risk, defined as juxtaposing the expectation of realizing certain projects and the awareness that such projects might fail. The book concludes with “The Ecology of Ignorance,” in which Luhmann outlines prospective research areas “for sponsors who have yet to be identified.”. (shrink)

Autism has been defined as a disorder of social cognition, interaction and communication where ritualistic, repetitive behaviors are commonly observed. But how should we understand the behavioral and cognitive differences that have been the main focus of so much autism research? Can high-level cognitive processes and behaviors be identified as the core issues people with autism face, or do these characteristics perhaps often rather reflect individual attempts to cope with underlying physiological issues? Much research presented in this volume (...) will point to the latter possibility, i.e. that people on the autism spectrum cope with issues at much lower physiological levels pertaining not only to Central Nervous Systems (CNS) function, but also to peripheral and autonomic systems (PNS, ANS) (Torres, Brincker, et al. 2013). The question that we pursue in this chapter is what might be fruitful ways of gaining objective measures of the large-scale systemic and heterogeneous effects of early atypical neurodevelopment; how to track their evolution over time and how to identify critical changes along the continuum of human development and aging. We suggest that the study of movement variability—very broadly conceived as including all minute fluctuations in bodily rhythms and their rates of change over time (coined micro-movements (Figure 1A-B) (Torres, Brincker, et al. 2013))—offers a uniquely valuable and entirely objectively quantifiable lens to better assess, understand and track not only autism but cognitive development and degeneration in general. This chapter presents the rationale firstly behind this focus on micro-movements and secondly behind the choice of specific kinds of data collection and statistical metrics as tools of analysis (Figure 1C). In brief the proposal is that the micro-movements (defined in Part I – Chapter 1), obtained using various time scales applied to different physiological data-types (Figure 1), contain information about layered influences and temporal adaptations, transformations and integrations across anatomically semi-independent subsystems that crosstalk and interact. Further, the notion of sensorimotor re-afference is used to highlight the fact that these layered micro-motions are sensed and that this sensory feedback plays a crucial role in the generation and control of movements in the first place. In other words, the measurements of various motoric and rhythmic variations provide an access point not only to the “motor systems”, but also access to much broader central and peripheral sensorimotor and regulatory systems. Lastly, we posit that this new lens can also be used to capture influences from systems of multiple entry points or collaborative control and regulation, such as those that emerge during dyadic social interactions. (shrink)

Cognitive semantic studies have shown that our conceptualization of morality is at least partially metaphorical and that our moral cognition is grounded in some fundamental contrastive categories of our embodied experience in the physical environment. It is argued that our moral cognition is built on a moral metaphor system. Within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory, this study aims to examine the spatial subsystem of moral metaphors in English. We set out with five pairs of moral metaphors that involve (...) the following spatial source concepts: HIGH and LOW, UPRIGHT and TILTED, LEVEL and UNLEVEL, STRAIGHT and CROOKED, and BIG and SMALL. These metaphors were found to constitute the spatial subsystem of moral metaphors in Chinese. Our primary goal is to find out if the five pairs of moral–spatial metaphors are manifested in English as well. To that end we collected linguistic data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and searched Google Images for multimodal evidence. Our finding is that the five pairs of moral–spatial metaphors are applicable in English as they are in Chinese. We also discuss issues related to conceptual metaphor theory. (shrink)

The structure of everyday language implies that knowledge is an object. Like an object, it can be acquired, lost, stored, retrieved, and used. Anything that might be done to an external object could also be done to knowledge. Using concepts from the emerging field of biofunctional cognition, this paper discusses an alternative to the everyday-language framework of knowledge. The central idea is that the biological subsystems that comprise the physical nervous system have the capacity to create in us a (...) live, as opposed to pre-recorded, experience that might be described as intuitive self-awareness. In its various manifestations, this ongoing intuitive self-awareness is what we recognize as the knowledge inside us. There is no storage of knowledge of any kind. Intuitive self-awareness is in a perpetual state of re-creation and change. It serves as a private language with which the individual interacts directly with the subsystems of his/her own nervous system. This is the primary function of intuitive self-awareness &emdash; serving as the vehicle for the private communication between the individual and the individual's nervous system. Intuitive self-awareness has also come to serve, through evolutionary symbolic adaptation, as the foundation for the public language that the individual uses to communicate with other individuals. This is the secondary function of the intuitive self-awareness &emdash; to serve as the vehicle for public communication within social groups in which the individual lives. In this function, intuitive self-awareness externalizes to manifest itself in the form of an indirect code system for public communication. The nonsymbolic and symbolic forms of knowledge enable the organism to extend its internal world to encompass the external world in both its totality and detail. (shrink)

This book is a unique exploration of the idea of the "second person" in human interaction, the idea that face-to-face interactions involve a distinctive form of reciprocal mental state attributions that mediates their dynamical unfolding. Challenging the view of mental attribution as a sort of "theory of mind", Pérez and Gomila argue that the second person perspective of mental understanding is the conceptually, ontogenetically, and phylogenetically basic way of understanding mentality. Second person interaction provides the opportunity for the acquisition of (...) concepts of mental states of increasing complexity. The book reviews the growing interest in a variety of second person phenomena, both in development and in adulthood, presenting research that shows how participants in human interaction attribute psychological states of a referentially transparent kind to each other. This review documents the spontaneous preference for face-to-face interaction, from eye contact to joint attention, from forms of vitality to communicative intentions, from interaction detection to joint action, and from synchrony to interpersonal coordination. Also looking at the implications and applications of the second person perspective within fields as diverse as art and morality, this book is fascinating reading for students and academics in social and cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and philosophy. (shrink)

The paper explicates the stages of the author’s philosophical evolution in the light of Kopnin’s ideas and heritage. Starting from Kopnin’s understanding of dialectical materialism, the author has stated that category transformations of physics has opened from conceptualization of immutability to mutability and then to interaction, evolvement and emergence. He has connected the problem of physical cognition universals with an elaboration of the specific system of tools and methods of identifying, individuating and distinguishing objects from a scientific theory domain. The (...) role of vacuum conception and the idea of existence (actual and potential, observable and nonobservable, virtual and hidden) types were analyzed. In collaboration with S.Crymski heuristic and regulative functions of categories of substance, world as a whole as well as postulates of relativity and absoluteness, and anthropic and self-development principles were singled out. Elaborating Kopnin’s view of scientific theories as a practically effective and relatively true mapping of their domains, the author in collaboration with M. Burgin have originated the unified structure-nominative reconstruction (model) of scientific theory as a knowledge system. According to it, every scientific knowledge system includes hierarchically organized and complex subsystems that partially and separately have been studied by standard, structuralist, operationalist, problem-solving, axiological and other directions of the current philosophy of science. 1) The logico-linguistic subsystem represents and normalizes by means of different, including mathematical, languages and normalizes and logical calculi the knowledge available on objects under study. 2) The model-representing subsystem comprises peculiar to the knowledge system ways of their modeling and understanding. 3) The pragmatic-procedural subsystem contains general and unique to the knowledge system operations, methods, procedures, algorithms and programs. 4) From the viewpoint of the problem-heuristic subsystem, the knowledge system is a unique way of setting and resolving questions, problems, puzzles and tasks of cognition of objects into question. It also includes various heuristics and estimations (truth, consistency, beauty, efficacy, adequacy, heuristicity etc) of components and structures of the knowledge system. 5) The subsystem of links fixes interrelations between above-mentioned components, structures and subsystems of the knowledge system. The structure-nominative reconstruction has been used in the philosophical and comparative case-studies of mathematical, physical, economic, legal, political, pedagogical, social, and sociological theories. It has enlarged the collection of knowledge structures, connected, for instance, with a multitude of theoreticity levels and with an application of numerous mathematical languages. It has deepened the comprehension of relations between the main directions of current philosophy of science. They are interpreted as dealing mainly with isolated subsystems of scientific theory. This reconstruction has disclosed a variety of undetected knowledge structures, associated also, for instance, with principles of symmetry and supersymmetry and with laws of various levels and degrees. In cooperation with the physicist Olexander Gabovich the modified structure-nominative reconstruction is in the processes of development and justification. Ideas and concepts were also in the center of Kopnin’s cognitive activity. The author has suggested and elaborated the triplet model of concepts. According to it, any scientific concept is a dependent on cognitive situation, dynamical, multifunctional state of scientist’s thinking, and available knowledge system. A concept is modeled as being consisted from three interrelated structures. 1) The concept base characterizes objects falling under a concept as well as their properties and relations. In terms of volume and content the logical modeling reveals partially only the concept base. 2) The concept representing part includes structures and means (names, statements, abstract properties, quantitative values of object properties and relations, mathematical equations and their systems, theoretical models etc.) of object representation in the appropriate knowledge system. 3) The linkage unites a structures and procedures that connect components from the abovementioned structures. The partial cases of the triplet model are logical, information, two-tired, standard, exemplar, prototype, knowledge-dependent and other concept models. It has introduced the triplet classification that comprises several hundreds of concept types. Different kinds of fuzziness are distinguished. Even the most precise and exact concepts are fuzzy in some triplet aspect. The notions of relations between real scientific concepts are essentially extended. For example, the definition and strict analysis of such relations between concepts as formalization, quantification, mathematization, generalization, fuzzification, and various kinds of identity are proposed. The concepts «PLANET» and «ELEMENTARY PARTICLE» and some of their metamorphoses were analyzed in triplet terms. The Kopnin’s methodology and epistemology of cognition was being used for creating conception of the philosophy of law as elaborating of understanding, justification, estimating and criticizing legal system. The basic information on the major directions in current Western philosophy of law (legal realism, feminism, criticism, postmodernism, economical analysis of law etc.) is firstly introduced to the Ukrainian audience. The classification of more than fifty directions in modern legal philosophy is suggested. Some results of historical, linguistic, scientometric and philosophic-legal studies of the present state of Ukrainian academic science are given. (shrink)

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)

Research on brain or cognitive/affective processes, culture, social interaction, and structural analysis are overlapping but often independent ways humans have attempted to understand the origins of their evolution, historical, and contemporary development. Each level seeks to employ its own theoretical concepts and methods for depicting human nature and categorizing objects and events in the world, and often relies on different sources of evidence to support theoretical claims. Each level makes reference to different temporal bandwidths (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, (...) months, years, decades, and centuries) and focuses on different spatio-temporal activities and controlled and non-controlled stimulus conditions. Biological mechanisms and environmental pressures for survival simultaneously created a gradual intersection and enhancement of cognitive/affective skills, cultural practices, and changes in collaborative social interaction and communicative skills. The evolution of a given level of analysis is assumed to have been incremental and overlapping. These innovative and independent ways humans have learned to characterize their brain or cognitive/affective and social/economic/political life often depend on unexamined, representational re-descriptions or cognitive/affective and socio-cultural devices and forms of communication that facilitate the depiction of practices and beliefs we attribute to respondents or subjects and research colleagues. (shrink)

Exploring emotions, in terms of their evolutionary origin; their basic neurobiological substratum, and their functional significance in autonomous agents, we propose a model of minimal functionality of emotions. Our aim is to provide a naturalized explanation – mostly based on an interactivist model of emergent representation and appraisal theory of emotions – concerning basic aesthetic emotions in the formation of aesthetic judgment. We suggest two processes the Cognitive Variables Subsystem (CVS) which is fundamental for the accomplishment of the function (...) of heuristic learning; and Aesthetic Appraisal Subsystem (AAS) which primarily affects the elicitation of aesthetic emotional meanings. These two subsystems (CVS and AAS) are organizationally connected and affect the action readiness of the autonomous agent. More specifically, we consider the emotional outcome of these two subsystems as a functional indication that strengthens or weakens the anticipation for the resolution of the dynamic uncertainty that emerges in the particular interaction. (shrink)

The idea that some day robots may have emotions has captured the imagination of many and has been dramatized by robots and androids in such famous movies as 2001 Space Odyssey's HAL or Star Trek's Data. By contrast, the editors of this book have assembled a panel of experts in neuroscience and artificial intelligence who have dared to tackle the issue of whether robots can have emotions from a purely scientific point of view. The study of the brain now usefully (...) informs study of the social, communicative, adaptive, regulatory, and experimental aspects of emotion and offers support for the idea that we exploit our own psychological responses in order to feel others' emotions. The contributors show the many ways in which the brain can be analyzed to shed light on emotions. Fear, reward, and punishment provide structuring concepts for a number of investigations. Neurochemistry reveals the ways in which different "neuromodulators" such as serotonin, dopamine, and opioids can affect the emotional valence of the brain. And studies of different regions such as the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex provide a view of the brain as a network of interacting subsystems. Related studies in artificial intelligence and robotics are discussed and new multi-level architectures are proposed that make it possible for emotions to be implemented. It is now an accepted task in robotics to build robots that perceive human expressions of emotion and can "express" simulated emotions to ease interactions with humans. Looking towards future innovations, some scientists posit roles for emotion with our fellow humans. All of these issues are covered in this timely and stimulating book which is written for researchers and graduated students in neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, robotics, and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

In October 2011, the “2nd European Network for Cognitive Systems, Robotics and Interaction”, EUCogII, held its meeting in Groningen on “Autonomous activity in real-world environments”, organized by Tjeerd Andringa and myself. This is a brief personal report on why we thought autonomy in real-world environments is central for cognitive systems research and what I think I learned about it. --- The theses that crystallized are that a) autonomy is a relative property and a matter of degree, b) increasing (...) autonomy of an artificial system from its makers and users is a necessary feature of increasingly intelligent systems that can deal with the real-world and c) more such autonomy means less control but at the same time improved interaction with the system. (shrink)

In the preface of his book Bunge states that his aim is to transform into a coherent, integral theory, compatible with the most recent findings in neurophysiology and psychology, the much discussed but elusive thesis that the mind is a set of brain activities. The first three chapters set up the theoretical machinery through which, in the rest of the book, the author will guide the familiar themes of sensation and perception, behavior and motivation, memory and learning, thinking and knowing, (...) consciousness, personality and sociality. In the first chapter Bunge seeks the most defensible and comprehensive formulation of the thesis referred to in the preface. After briefly dispatching all forms of psychophysical dualism he argues for what he calls emergentist psychophysical monism, which is the position that all "mental" states, events and processes are nothing but emergent brain states, events, and processes whose synergy can be explained by appeal to the interactions of various subsystems of brain and body. The next two chapters, entitled, respectively, "The Organ" and "The Functions," show how these emergent processes can be explained in terms of the overall structure and function of the brain. Relying on space-state mathematical models, Bunge gives a general account of the relation between structure and function which undercuts, presumably, both atomist and holist assumptions. Molar neural events, he urges, can be explained only systemically since current research has revealed that there exist spatially locatable subsystems, as well as a neural supersystem where every stimulus acts on some or all subsystems at once and every response is modulated by "geographically" distinct subsystems. In the ensuing chapters Bunge employs this biosystemic model of total brain function to explain how events that one might be tempted to consider "mental" can be accounted for as systemic events. Hence, in the chapter on sensation and perception Bunge contends that "our perceptions are... events in the plastic part of our own sensory cortex" and offers as evidence for this the work of Bindra and other cell-assembly theorists on the itineracy of perceptual events. And, in the chapter on thinking and knowing, Bunge maintains that cognitive creativity is the activity or an effect of the activity of a newly formed neural system and that, consequently, "all animals endowed with plastic neural systems are creative.". (shrink)

Some properties of cognitive networks are discussed in the article in the context of the modern achievements of the network science. It is the study in network structures and their surprising properties that gives a new impetus to the development of the theory of complex systems. The analysis of cognitive processes from the point of view of the network structures that arise in them not only fits with such concepts already existing in cognitive science and epistemology, as (...) cognitive niches, cognitive maps, cognitive coherence, etc.), but also brings some new aspects to the understanding of interactivity, intersubjectivity, synergy in cognition and creative activities, empathy. (shrink)

Many cognitive activities are irreducibly social, involving interaction between several different agents. We look at some examples of this in linguistic communication and games, and show how logical methods provide exact models for the relevant information flow and world change. Finally, we discuss possible connections in this arena between logico-computational approaches and experimental cognitive science.

Cognitive functions are directly related to interactions between the brain's functional networks. This functional organization changes in the autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the heterogeneous nature of autism brings inconsistency in the findings, and specific pattern of changes based on the cognitive theories of ASD still requires to be well-understood. In this study, we hypothesized that the theory of mind (ToM), and the weak central coherence theory must follow an alteration pattern in the network level of functional interactions. (...) The main aim is to understand this pattern by evaluating interactions between all the brain functional networks. Moreover, the association between the significantly altered interactions and cognitive dysfunctions in autism is also investigated. We used resting-state fMRI data of 106 subjects (5–14 years, 46 ASD: five female, 60 HC: 18 female) to define the brain functional networks. Functional networks were calculated by applying four parcellation masks and their interactions were estimated using Pearson's correlation between pairs of them. Subsequently, for each mask, a graph was formed based on the connectome of interactions. Then, the local and global parameters of the graph were calculated. Finally, statistical analysis was performed using a two-sample t-test to highlight the significant differences between autistic and healthy control groups. Our corrected results show significant changes in the interaction of default mode, sensorimotor, visuospatial, visual, and language networks with other functional networks that can support the main cognitive theories of autism. We hope this finding sheds light on a better understanding of the neural underpinning of autism. (shrink)

An important shift is taking place in social cognition research, away from a focus on the individual mind and toward embodied and participatory aspects of social understanding. Empirical results already imply that social cognition is not reducible to the workings of individual cognitive mechanisms. To galvanize this interactive turn, we provide an operational definition of social interaction and distinguish the different explanatory roles – contextual, enabling and constitutive – it can play in social cognition. We show that interactive processes (...) are more than a context for social cognition: they can complement and even replace individual mechanisms. This new explanatory power of social interaction can push the field forward by expanding the possibilities of scientific explanation beyond the individual. (shrink)

Cognition in work teams has been predominantly understood and explained in terms of shared cognition with a focus on the similarity of static knowledge structures across individual team members. Inspired by the current zeitgeist in cognitive science, as well as by empirical data and pragmatic concerns, we offer an alternative theory of team cognition. Interactive Team Cognition (ITC) theory posits that (1) team cognition is an activity, not a property or a product; (2) team cognition should be measured and (...) studied at the team level; and (3) team cognition is inextricably tied to context. There are implications of ITC for theory building, modeling, measurement, and applications that make teams more effective performers. (shrink)

The interdisciplinary research area Cognitive Interaction Technology (CIT) aims to understand and support interactions between human users and other elements of socio-technical systems. Important reasons for the new interest in understanding CIT in sport psychology are the impressive development of cognitive robotics and advanced technologies such as virtual or augmented reality systems, cognitive glasses or neurotechnology settings. The present article outlines this area of research, addresses ethical issues, and presents an empirical study in the context of a (...) new measurement and assessment system for training in karate. Recent advances in the field of cognitive assistance systems enabled largely automatized assessments of individual mental representation structures for action sequences, such as choreographed movement patterns in dance or martial arts. Empirical investigations with karate practitioners of different skill levels demonstrate that advanced software-based survey and algorithmic analysis procedures based on cognitive models generate individualized performance predictions for a movement sequence from theKanku-dai kata(a pre-defined karate movement sequence), which correlated significantly not only with formal expertise (kyu/danrank) but also with the actual likelihood of mistakes in action execution. This information could prospectively be used to define individual training goals for deliberate practice and incorporated into cognitive interaction technology to provide appropriate feedback. We argue that the development of cognitive interaction systems for sport should explicitly take ethical issues into consideration and present a particular developed engineering approach. The potential benefits of such an assistance system for intermediate and advanced practitioners include more effective and flexible practice, as well as supportive effects, and more flexible training schedules. Furthermore, we argue that researchers from the field of sport psychology can benefit from advances in technological systems that enhance the understanding of mental and motor control in skilled voluntary action. (shrink)

Context: Distributed language and interactivity are central members of a set of concepts that are rapidly developing into rigorous, exciting additions to 4E cognitive science. Because they share certain assumptions and methodological commitments with enactivism, the two have sometimes been confused; additionally, while enactivism is a well-developed paradigm, interactivity has relied more on methodological development and on a set of focal examples. Problem: The goal of this article is to clarify the core conceptual commitments of both interactivity-based and enactive (...) approaches to cognitive science by contrasting the two and highlighting their differences in assumptions, focus, and explanatory strategies. Method: We begin with the shared commitments of interactivity and enactivism - e.g., antirepresentationalism, naturalism, interdisciplinarity, the importance of biology, etc. We then give an overview of several important varieties of enactivism, including sensorimotor and anti-representationalist enactivism, and then walk through the history of the “core” varieties, taking care to contrast Maturana’s approach with that of Varela and the current researchers following in Varela’s footsteps. We then describe the differences between this latter group and interactivity-based approaches to cognitive science. Results: We argue that enactivism’s core concepts are explanatorily inadequate in two ways. First, they mis-portray the organization of many living systems, which are not operationally closed. Second, they fail to realize that most epistemic activity depends on engagement with non-local resources. Both problems can be dealt with by adopting an interactivity-based perspective, in which agency and cognition are fundamentally distributed and involve integration of non-local resources into the local coupling of organism and environment. Implications: The article’s primary goal is theoretical clarification and exposition; its primary implication is that enactive concepts need to be modified or extended in some way in order to explain fully many aspects of cognition and directed biological activity. Or, read another way, the article’s primary implication is that interactivity already provides a rich set of concepts for doing just that, which, while closely allied with enactivism in several ways, are not enactivist concepts. Constructivist content: The article consists entirely of a comparison between two constructivist fields of theory. Key Words: Interactivity, enactivism, distributed language, radical embodied cognitive science, ecological psychology, autonomy. (shrink)

The central claim here is that the self is an emergent experiential, information processing and behavioral system that arises reflexively in the conscious subject and a body setting that is organized and primed with many of the required processes in place. These processes and their associated functions represent our world as coherent and temporally unified within the construct of a developing and roughly continuous experiencer-agent, or self. These representations are not, however, copies of the external world. In this way, selves (...) develop as temporal subjects; as active and complex informational, dispositional, belief-driven and memory-driven configurations of mental states with unique (personal) properties that interact. They are robust and pivotal subsystems of our global mental organization and are suffused with the phenomenality of perception. As constructs in internal and external time, selves have histories, memories, beliefs, skills, cognitive capacities, attitudes, standpoints, social and emotional equities, pre-dispositions and default responses. Yet they are neither causally nor ontologically reducible to their embodied physical states. They are, rather, implemented in them. The body, I maintain, is a necessary but insufficient condition for the occurrence of a self. (shrink)

The role of interaction in learning is essential and profound: it must provide the means to solve open problems (those only vaguely specified in advance), but cannot be captured using our familiar formal cognitive tools. This presents an impasse to those confined to present formalisms; but interaction is fundamentally dynamical, not formal, and with its importance thus underlined it invites the development of a distinctively interactivist account of life and mind. This account is provided, from its roots in the (...) interactivist biological constitution of life, through the evolution of the dual internal regulatory capacities expressed as intentionality and intelligence, to its expression in self-directed anticipative learning in persons and in science. (shrink)

The study of animal behavior, and particularly avian behavior, has advanced significantly in the past 50 years. In the early 1960s, both ethologists and psychologists were likely to see birds as simple automatons, incapable of complex cognitive processing. Indeed, the term “avian cognition” was considered an oxymoron. Avian social interaction was also seen as based on rigid, if sometimes complicated, patterns. The possible effect of social interaction on cognition, or vice versa, was therefore something almost never discussed. Two paradigm (...) shifts—one concerning animal cognition and one concerning social interaction—began to change perceptions in, respectively, the early 1970s and 1980s, but only more recently have researchers actively investigated how these two areas intersect in the study of avian behavior. The fruits of such intersection can be seen in the various papers for this special issue. I provide some brief background material before addressing the striking findings of current projects. In some cases, researchers have adapted early classic methods and in other cases have devised new paradigms, but in all instances have demonstrated avian capacities that were once thought to be the exclusive domain of humans or at least nonhuman primates. Keywords: avian cognition; avian social learning; avian observational learning; avian communication. (shrink)

David Marr's (1982) three‐level analysis of computational cognition argues for three distinct levels of cognitive information processing—namely, the computational, representational, and implementational levels. But Marr's levels are—and were meant to be—descriptive, rather than interactive and dynamic. For this reason, we suggest that, had Marr been writing today, he might well have gone even farther in his analysis, including the emergence of structure—in particular, explicit structure at the conceptual level—from lower levels, and the effect of explicit emergent structures on the (...) level (or levels) that gave rise to them. The message is that today's cognitive scientists need not only to understand how emergent structures—in particular, explicit emergent structures at the cognitive level—develop but also to understand how they feed back on the sub‐structures from which they emerged. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis (EM) asserts that some cognitive processes are (partially) composed of actions consisting of the manipulation and exploitation of environmental structures. Might some processes at the root of social cognition have a similarly extended structure? In this paper, I argue that social cognition is fundamentally an interactive form of space management—the negotiation and management of ‘‘we-space”—and that some of the expressive actions involved in the negotiation and management of we-space (gesture, touch, facial and whole-body expressions) drive (...) basic processes of interpersonal understanding and thus do genuine social-cognitive work. Social interaction is a kind of extended social cognition, driven and at least partially constituted by environmental (non-neural) scaffolding. Challenging the Theory of Mind paradigm, I draw upon research from gesture studies, developmental psychology, and work on Moebius Syndrome to support this thesis. (shrink)