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1469Understanding social norms and constitutive rules: Perspectives from developmental psychology and philosophyPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14 (4): 699-718. 2015.An experimental paradigm that purports to test young children’s understanding of social norms is examined. The paradigm models norms on Searle’s notion of a constitutive rule. The experiments and the reasons provided for their design are discussed. It is argued that the experiments do not provide direct evidence about the development of social norms and that the concepts of a social norm and constitutive rule are distinct. The experimental data are re-interpreted, and suggestions for how to deal…Read more
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902Attention and the evolution of intentional communicationPragmatics and Cognition 9 (2): 259-277. 2000.Intentional communication is perceptually based and about attentional objects. Three attention mechanisms are distinguished: scanning, attention attraction, and attention-focusing. Attention-focusing directs the subject towards attentional objects. Attention-focusing is goal-governed (controlled by stimulus) or goal-intended (under the control of the subject). Attentional objects are perceptually categorised functional entities that emerge in the interaction between subjects and environment. Joi…Read more
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732The developmental origin of metacognitionInfant and Child Development 22 85-101. 2013.We explain metacognition as a management of cognitive resources that does not necessitate algorithmic strategies or metarepresentation. When pragmatic, world-directed actions cannot reduce the distance to the goal, agents engage in epistemic action directed at cognition. Such actions often are physical and involve other people, and so are open to observation. Taking a dynamic systems approach to development, we suggest that implicit and perceptual metacognition emerges from dyadic reciprocal int…Read more
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718Situated Cognition, Dynamic Systems, and ArtJanus Head 9 (2): 407-431. 2007.It is argued that the theory of situated cognition together with dynamic systems theory can explain the core of artistic practice and aesthetic experience, and furthermore paves the way for an account of how artist and audience can meet via the artist's work. The production and consumption of art is an embodied practice, firmly based in perception and action, and supported by features of the local, agent-centered and global socio-cultural contexts. Artistic creativity and aesthetic experience eq…Read more
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662Co–operation and communication in apes and humansMind and Language 18 (5). 2003.We trace the difference between the ways in which apes and humans co–operate to differences in communicative abilities, claiming that the pressure for future–directed co–operation was a major force behind the evolution of language. Competitive co–operation concerns goals that are present in the environment and have stable values. It relies on either signalling or joint attention. Future–directed co–operation concerns new goals that lack fixed values. It requires symbolic communication and contex…Read more
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597Empathy, engagement, entrainment: the interaction dynamics of aesthetic experienceCognitive Processing 2 (19): 201-213. 2018.A recent version of the view that aesthetic experience is based in empathy as inner imitation explains aesthetic experience as the automatic simulation of actions, emotions, and bodily sensations depicted in an artwork by motor neurons in the brain. Criticizing the simulation theory for committing to an erroneous concept of empathy and failing to distinguish regular from aesthetic experiences of art, I advance an alternative, dynamic approach and claim that aesthetic experience is enacted and s…Read more
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555Investigating the development of creativity : The Sahlin hypothesisAgainst Boredom : 17 Essays. 2015.How should the development of creativity be approached? Many accounts of children’s creativity focus on the relation between creativity and pretend play, placing make-believe and the mental exploration of possible scenarios about the world at the fore. Often divergent thinking and story-telling are used to measure creativity with fluency, originality, and flexibility as indicators. I will argue that the strong focus on conceptual processes and higher-order thought leaves procedural forms of crea…Read more
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522Developing an understanding of social norms and games : Emotional engagement, nonverbal agreement, and conversationTheory and Psychology 24 (6). 2014.The first part of the article examines some recent studies on the early development of social norms that examine young children’s understanding of codified rule games. It is argued that the constitutive rules than define the games cannot be identified with social norms and therefore the studies provide limited evidence about socio-normative development. The second part reviews data on children’s play in natural settings that show that children do not understand norms as codified or rules of obli…Read more
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483Representation and Self-Awareness in Intentional AgentsSynthese 118 (1). 1999.Several conditions for being an intrinsically intentional agent are put forward. On a first level of intentionality the agent has representations. Two kinds are described: cued and detached. An agent with both kinds is able to represent both what is prompted by the context and what is absent from it. An intermediate level of intentionality is achieved by having an inner world, that is, a coherent system of detached representations that model the world. The inner world is used, e.g., for conditio…Read more
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404Mutual Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction: a Deflationary AccountPhilosophy and Technology 1 (1): 53-70. 2018.Mutually adaptive interaction involves the robot as a partner as opposed to a tool, and requires that the robot is susceptible to similar environmental cues and behavior patterns as humans are. Recognition, or the acknowledgement of the other as individual, is fundamental to mutually adaptive interaction between humans. We discuss what recognition involves and its behavioral manifestations, and describe the benefits of implementing it in HRI.
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396Mutual Recognition in Human-Robot Interaction: a Deflationary AccountPhilosophy and Technology 33 (1): 53-70. 2020.Mutually adaptive interaction involves the robot as a partner as opposed to a tool, and requires that the robot is susceptible to similar environmental cues and behavior patterns as humans are. Recognition, or the acknowledgement of the other as individual, is fundamental to mutually adaptive interaction between humans. We discuss what recognition involves and its behavioral manifestations, and describe the benefits of implementing it in HRI.
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367The Indexical ‘I’: The First Person in Thought and LanguageKluwer Academic Publishers. 2012.The subject of this book is the first person in thought and language. The main question concerns what we mean when we say 'J'. Related to it are questions about what kinds of self-consciousness and self-knowledge are needed in order for us to have the capacity to talk about ourselves. The emphasis is on theories of meaning and reference for 'J', but a fair amount of space is devoted to 'I' -thoughts and the role of the concept of the self in cognition. The purpose is to give a picture of how we …Read more
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217Replies to CommentariesInfant and Child Development 22 111-117. 2013.In our response, we address four themes arising from the commentaries. First, we discuss the distinction between cognition and metacognition and show how to draw it within our framework. Next, we explain how metacognition differs from social cognition. The underlying mechanisms of metacognitive development are then elucidated in terms of interaction patterns. Finally, we consider measures of metacognition and suitable methods for investigating it.
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163The objects of attention: Causes and targetsBehavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (3): 287-288. 2003.The objects of attention can be located anywhere along the causal link from the source of stimuli to the final output of the vision system. As causes, they attract and control attention, and as products, they constitute targets of analysis and explicit comments. Stimulus-driven indexing creates pointers that support fast and frugal cognition
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157Nonconceptual content and the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledgeBehavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (5): 760-761. 1999.The notion of nonconceptual content in Dienes & Perner's theory is examined. A subject may be in a state with nonconceptual content without having the concepts that would be used to describe the state. Nonconceptual content does not seem to be a clear-cut case of either implicit or explicit knowledge. It underlies a kind of practical knowledge, which is not reducible to procedural knowledge, but is accessible to the subject and under voluntary control.
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114Joint Attention, Triangulation and Radical Interpretation: A problem and its SolutionDialectica 58 (2): 179-206. 2004.By describing the aim of triangulation as locating the objects of thoughts and utterances, Davidson has given in the double role of accounting for both the individuation of content and the sense in which content necessarily is public. The focus of this article is on how triangulation may contribute to the individuation of content. I maintain that triangulation, interpreted in terms of joint attention, may serve to break into the intentional circle of meaning and belief, yet without forcing us to…Read more
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100The paper discusses the concept of explanation in metaphysics. Different types of explanation are identified and explored. Scientific explanation is compared with metaphysical explanation. The comparison illustrates the difficulties with applying the concept of explanation in metaphysics
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65Self-identification and self-referenceElectronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6. 1998.[1] To know who one is, and also know whether one's experiences really belong to oneself, do not normally present any problem. It nevertheless happens that people do not recognise themselves as they walk by a mirror or do not understand that they fit some particular description. But there are situations in which it really seems impossible to be wrong about oneself. Of that, Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote: " It is possible that, say in an accident, I should feel pain in my arm, see a broken arm a…Read more
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63Compositionality and Other Issues in the Philosophy of Mind and Language An interview with Jerry FodorTheoria 71 (4): 294-308. 2005.
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42Procedures and Strategies: Context-dependence in CreativityPhilosophica 64 (2): 33-47. 1999.Recently, it has been suggested that at least somekinds of mental representation are strongly context-dependent. Not only what is represented, but also how, depends on the context and the subject's interaction with it. Theories about situated cognition stress the importance of the subject's bodily presence and physical activity in the environment for representing and thinking. What does this mean for creativity? Context-dependence can, it seems, both impede and support creativity. Is creativity …Read more
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34Dialogue in the making: emotional engagement with materialsPhenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 19 (1): 23-45. 2020.Taking a psychological and philosophical outlook, we approach making as an embodied and embedded skill via the skilled artisan’s experience of having a corporeal, nonlinguistic dialogue with the material while working with it. We investigate the dynamic relation between maker and material through the lens of pottery as illustrated by wheel throwing, claiming that the experience of dialogue signals an emotional involvement with clay. The examination of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of habit, the …Read more
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31Why metaphysicians do not explainIn Anne Reboul (ed.), Philosophical Papers Dedicated to Kevin Mulligan, . 2011.The paper discusses the concept of explanation in metaphysics. Different types of explanation are identified and explored. Scientific explanation is compared with metaphysical explanation. The comparison illustrates the difficulties with applying the concept of explanation in metaphysics.
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28Todays dispruptive technologies will change the layout of our cities and change urban life. Discussing what future cities need to thrive, how aesthitic value arises from embodied interaction and the need for walkable landscapes, I suiggest that enviroments that afford placing the second person first will make us more kind.
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25In an experimental study of humans reactions to social motor intention in a humanoid robot, we showed that SMI cause the emergence of social interaction between human and robot. We investigated whether people would respond differently to a humanoid robot depending on the kinematic profile of its movement. A robot placed a block on a table in front of a human subject in three different ways. We designed the robot’s arm and upper body movements to manifest the human kinematic profile of either a n…Read more
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24The role of intersubjectivity for the development of intentional communicationIn J. Zlatev, T. Racine, C. Sinha & E. Itkonen (eds.), The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity, John Benjamins. pp. 115--140. 2008.The present account explains (i) which elements of nonverbal reference are intersubjective, (ii) what major effects intersubjectivity has on the general development of intentional communication and at what stages, and (iii) how intersubjectivity contributes to triggering the general capacity for nonverbal reference in the second year of life. First, intersubjectivity is analysed in terms of a sharing of experiences that is either mutual or individual, and either dyadic or triadic. Then it is sho…Read more
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