•  25
    Todays 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.
  •  16
    In 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
  •  21
    Why metaphysicians do not explain
    with Sahlin Nils-Eric, Göran Hermerén, and Johannes Persson
    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.
  •  342
    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.
  •  3
    It is argued that the capacity to focus attention is crucial for intentional communication. Intentional communication is goal-intended; directed at changing mental states and as a consequence behaviour; about a referential object common to sender and recipient; and about objects that may be context-and referent-independent. Three different kinds of attention is discerned: scanning, attention attraction, and attention-focusing. The focus of attention can, depending on the abilities of the subject…Read more
  •  7
    Imperative and declarative pointing are distinct kinds of communicative acts that rely on different cognitive capacities in the speakers. Declarative pointing is an important precursor to language, seen from both an evolutionary and a developmental perspective. Declarative pointing is functionally independent of affective intersubjectivity, yet it is intimately related to it in development. It is argued that declarative pointing once evolved because it allows for the mutual evaluation of joint o…Read more
  •  5
    The starting-point of this talk is the question which are the objects of attention? The answer simply is that there are no objects of attention as such, i.e., no generic objects of attention. Instead several kinds of object of attention can be discerned troughout the attention process. Which kind will constitute the actual object of attention in a certain situation depends on the task that the subject is performing and on the level of analysis. I will substantiate this claim by giving an overvie…Read more
  •  4
    An applied analysis of attentional intersubjectivity
    with Jordan Zlatev and Mats Andrén
    The goal of the present deliverable is to provide a developmental analysis of attentional intersubjectivity, which, as we show below, is a more inclusive notion than the more commonly used term ‘joint attention’. The use of the term ‘joint attention’ is not consistent in the literature, sometimes referring to the general phenomenon when two or more subjects attend to the same target, sometimes to more reciprocal situations in which the subjects also are aware of attending to the same target. Mos…Read more
  •  8
    Value uncertainty and value instability in decision-making
    with Göran Hermerén, Johannes Persson, and Nils-Eric Sahlin
    In Julien Dutant, Davide Fassio & Anne Meylan (eds.), Liber Amicorum Pascal Engel, . pp. 100-110. 2014.
    The purpose of this paper is to clarify the role of value uncertainty and value instability in decision-making that concerns morally controversial issues. Value uncertainty and value instability are distinguished from moral uncertainty, and several types of value uncertainty and value instability are defined and discussed. The relations between value uncertainty and value instability are explored, and value uncertainty is illustrated with examples drawn from the social sciences, medicine and eve…Read more
  •  5
    Comparative psychology is a strongly interdisciplinary field that shares many of its experimental methods and observational techniques with ethology and developmental psychology. The great variety of theories that comparative psychology evokes to explain behavior generates a wide array of exciting and potentially fruitful accounts, but is also problematic. It increases the risk of error in the forms of inconsistent background assumptions, conceptual misunderstandings, unfalsifiable hypotheses an…Read more
  •  6
    Apperly's and Butterfill's theory about belief reasoning is taken as a starting-point for a discussion of how we make sense of other people's actions in real time. More specifically, the focus lies on how we can understand others' actions in terms of their epistemic states on an implicit level of processing. First, the relevant parts of Apperly's and Butterfill's theory are summarized. Then, their account of implicit theory of mind in terms of registration ascription and perceptual encountering …Read more
  •  13
    To improvise together for the pure curiosity, joy, and beauty of it constitutes a central but often neglected ability of human beings. Integrating pragmatic, practical, and technical skills with conceptual understanding, improvisation is adaptive and collaborative. It seems made to counter the challenges of living in a fleeting present, unconstrained by physical and historical boundaries, and very likely has deep evolutionary roots. I present an account of joint improvisation in the performative…Read more
  •  8
    The role of intersubjectivity in intentional communication
    In Tim Racine, Jordan Zlatev, Chris Sinha & Esa Itkonen (eds.), The Shared Mind: Perspectives on Intersubjectivity, . 2008.
    The present account explains which elements of the act of nonverbal reference are intersubjective, which major effects intersubjectivity has on the development of intentional communication and at what stages, and how intersubjectivity contributes to trigger the general capacity for nonverbal reference in the second year. First, intersubjectivity is analysed in terms of a mutual or individual, dyadic or triadic, sharing of experiences. It is then shown that nonverbal reference presupposes intersu…Read more
  •  12
    1. Introduction; 2. Indexical self-awareness; 3. Detached self-awareness; 4. Social self-awareness; 5. Basic social self-awareness; 6. Developed social self-awareness; 7. Person-consciousness.
  •  2
    Towards an explanation of the evolution of language. Comment on Origgi & Sperber
    In Peter Dominey, Gloria Origgi & A. Reboule (eds.), Interdisciplines, . 2004.
  •  3
    From parity and complex imitation to pantomime. Comment on Arbib
    In Peter Dominey, Gloria Origgi & A. Reboul (eds.), Interdisciplines, . 2004.
  •  29
    Dialogue in the making: emotional engagement with materials
    Phenomenology 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
  •  14
    Change Blindness in Higher-Order Thought: Misrepresentation or Good Enough?
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 24 (5-6): 50-73. 2017.
    Abstract: To evaluate the explanation of change blindness in terms of misrepresentation and determine its role for Rosenthal’s higher-order thought theory of consciousness, we present an alternative account of change blindness that affords an independent outlook and provides a viable alternative. First we describe Rosenthal’s actualism and the notion of misrepresentation, then introduce change blindness and the explanation of it by misrepresentation. Rosenthal asserts that, in change blindness, …Read more
  •  352
    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.
  • Artificiell Intelligens: Tankar utan innehåll?
    In Åke E. Andersson & Nils-Eric Sahlin (eds.), Huvudinnehåll: Tolv Filosofiska Uppsatser, . pp. 121-146. 1993.
    Artificiell intelligens (AI) är ett ungt forskningsområde där många av de grundläggande problemen förefaller att vara av filosofisk art.1 Ämnet har sina filosofiska rötter dels i traditionen från Leibniz, Frege, Russell och Hilbert, som strävar efter att formalisera principerna för exakt tänkande, dels i den klassiska mekanismen: idén att människan är en maskin och att det mänskliga tänkandet är en mekanisk process. Som en första approximation kan vi säga att AI är det vetenskapliga studiet av h…Read more
  •  108
    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
  •  7
    Evaluation and Testing in Creativity
    In A. Rojszczak, J. Cachro & G. Kurczewski (eds.), Philosophical Dimensions of Logic and Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 331--344. 2003.
    In situations that require creative thinking, there is no well-known procedure for how to reach the goal, or the solution. Among other things, it is not clear how choices between outcomes are made, or when the search for a solution should terminate. The article focusses on the evaluation of solutions that are generated during the search. The general question concerns the standards according to which evaluation is made. Are they at all similar to those that are used in normal problem-solving? Ano…Read more
  •  554
    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