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Interactional Intelligence – an Explosive Evolution of Reflexible Eventities
keywords: interactional intelligence (ii), reflexibility, eventity, explosive evolution, ambient intelligence (AmI), techchnology, new animism Introduction 2009 sees the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, ‘On the Origin of Species’. So it’s irresistible to write a sketch in which evolutionary principles play a significant explanatory role. This sketch is about the symbiotic evolution of humans and technology. It seems that this combination has the potential to enhance evolution itself, changing and creating species and that with an explosive speed. Which calls for another work, ‘On the Future of Species’. This text does not contain the outlines for that work. I just like to explore some perspectives on the present and short-term foreseen co-evolution of humans and technology, looking for principles according to which humans and technology are supposed to interact. In 2003 the Dutch multinational Philips published a book about ambient intelligence, providing a vision on and examples of future technology, which according to this vision will be embedded in the human environment, thanks to the small size of smart tools and their computational and communicative strength. Networks of smart tools will become personally and contextually sensitive, responsive, adaptive and anticipatory. The from these networks emerging ambient intelligence should serve human wellbeing by providing personalized information, communication, entertainment and care. Qualifying the intelligence of the future technology as ‘ambient’ puts the unfolding intelligence for a great deal outside the humans it is supposed to be focussed on, which is of course not a bad thing for the companies that hope to make big money providing that technology (using the slogan PPP: People, Planet, Profit). On the contrary it could be argued that really personalized, adapted and anticipating intelligence cannot but be developed dynamically, based on a firm interdepence of the intelligence of the ‘central human’ (the flexible user) and the intelligence of the interactive systems that surround the ‘central human’ (the adaptive technology). This interdepence pictures the man-machines-relation and its resulting intelligent behavior already as an interactive concept. On the other hand it can’t be excluded that converging technologies (physical, biological and ICT) will result in species that in the long run will find their own way, possibly a way in which human-centrism is not an obvious element. For these reasons I prefer another qualification of the intelligence to come: interactional intelligence. Interactional intelligence encapsulates in the first developmental stage humans and smart tools as mutually constituting and developing each other in a dynamic stream of interactions. But in the long run interactional intelligence doesn’t exclude an evolution towards non-humans that show behavior which could be labeled reasonably well as intelligent interaction. The next sections provide sketches of the concepts intelligence, ambient intelligence, interaction, interactional intelligence and reflexible eventities. intelligence definitions of intelligence One definition of intelligence phrases it as a person’s [ or a system’s, OBW ] capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, another defines it as the ability to act goal-directed, think rationally and cope effectively with the environment (Wechsler). In 1994 52 mainstream intelligence theorists agreed on the next definition: ‘A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on", "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.’ theories of intelligence Intelligence theorists argue about the question whether intelligence has to be seen as a general concept (e.g. Spearman’s (1904) general intelligence as psychometric construct or Eysenck’s (1994) global intelligence) or can be factorized into different forms (e.g. Cattell’s (1987) fluid and crystallized intelligence or Sternberg’s (1985) componential/analytic, experiential/creative/synthetic, and practical/contextual intelligence) or even has to be taken as a multiple phenomenon (e.g. Gardner (1983) who distinguishes 8 categories of intelligence: 1 Bodily-kinesthetic, 2 Interpersonal, 3 Verbal-linguistic, 4 Logical-mathematical, 5 Naturalistic (added in 1997), 6 Intrapersonal, 7 Visual-spatial, 8 Musical ). measurement of intelligence A thermometer is an adequate instrument for the detection of fever, but the degree of fever doesn’t tell much about what causes the fever. Intelligence-tests also produce a score. This score can be taken as a relative degree of cognitive intelligence at the time of measurement. In this case we know a bit more about how specific levels of intelligence are determined, because these tests are supposed to measure different cognitive abilities: e.g. verbal, nummerical, mathematical, logical, spacial, technical and memorial abilities. Although different cognitive abilities are measured, most of the time the correlations of the scores on these different abilities are significantly high, which substantiates the main argument for treating intelligence as a general or global concept. The resulting scores are used for detecting educational needs and for predicting e.g. educational achievement and job performance. development of intelligence Regarding humans, individual differences in intelligence are substantially influenced by genetics and environmental factors and both genes and environment, in complex interplay, conctribute to the development of intellectual competence, although there are continuing debates about the weight of the hereditary and environmental factors. Human intelligence can be altered or changed over time due to the neuroplasticity of the brain and challenging activities (in which activities technological agents will play an increasingly significant role). Regarding technological agents, embodied technology, generative algorithms and environment, in complex interplay, contribute to the development of the intellectual competence of technological agents. An important lift-off factor in the environment of technological agents will be human intelligence: e.g. reverse engeneering of human cognitive abilities and human-based computation will considerably enhance intellectual competence of technological agents. ambient intelligence The authors of Ambient Intelligence (2003) picture a technological development until 2020 during which time the next levels of ambient intelligence (AmI from now on) has to be developed. AmI should become:
The AmI vision is not without criticism (Wright et al, 2008, van den Berg,2009). Technical problems to be tackled are e.g. energy resources, the wireless connections of different types of devices and standardization of the information that has to be exchanged between the devices of different producers. Further AmI’s immersive, personalized, context-aware and anticipatory characteristics bring up societal, political and cultural concerns about the loss of consumer privacy and security, power concentration in large organizations, fear for an increasingly individualized, fragmented society (unclear how social compromises can be worked out at conflicts of adaptations/anticipations of different persons in the shared situation) and hyperreal environments where the virtual could become indistinguishable from the real (hyperreality). Critical thinking on AmI distances itself therefore from some of the original characteristics such as adaptive and anticipatory behaviour and emphasizes empowerment and participation to place control in the hands of people instead of organizations. Enthousiasm and criticism are inspired by different types of philosophical views, e.g. instrumentalism (what humans do with technology makes it good or bad), determinism (technologies like AmI will, as force in its own right, develop beyond the control and grasp of humans, for better and for worse) or constructionism (both technology and humans will together develop and change continuously and contingently in reciprocal interactions in their ‘interwoven spheres’) (cf e.g. van den Berg, 2009, who takes a constructionist as wel as ‘techno-pragmatical’ stance somewhere in the middle of ‘techno-enthousiasm’ and ‘technoglum’). interaction Historically one can distinguish different lines of development related to the role of tools and technology in human life, e.g.
definitions (and examples) of interaction Simply stated, ‘action’ means that A exerts some effect on B, ‘interaction’ that B simultaneously exerts some effect on A as well. Unless one beliefs in action as something that is created ‘ex nihilo’, it’s obvious that ‘actions’ are derived from ‘interactions’ (‘in media res’). In different domains different types of interactions are formulated (see these examples). The examples mentioned make clear that already within the same domain different types of interaction cannot be reduced to each other, which holds even more for different types of interactions in different domains. Despite this irreducibility, there is a trend in some theories about human-technology interactions that blurs man-machine-differences into a more symmetrical relation (e.g. Latour’s actor-network-theory, 2005; Seifert, 2008). W. Rammert (in Seifert, 2008) agrees with the rejection of a dualist view on the man-machine relation as well with the anti-reductionist stance, but he regards the idea of a symmetrical relation as ‘too flat’. Instead he proposes a gradual concept of distrubuted agency. Agency is not located in the humans or in the technological units, but it is distributed over the interactional relations in which all kinds of different agents (human and non-human) are involved. Rammert distinguishes three types of inter-agency: 1 interaction (between human actors), 2 intra-activity (between technical agents) and 3 interactivitiy (between humans and objects, cf ‘interface’). He also distinguishes three different levels or grades of agency (opposing Gidden’s three-level model of action and Latour’s flattened concept of agency with its methodological and ontological symmetry): 1 causality (from action that exerts effects up to permanent re-structuring of actions), 2 contingency (from selection of pre-selected options up to self-generation of actions) and 3 intentionality (from ascription of simple dispositions up to guidance by complex semantics). And his ‘units of analysis’ are not isolated agents or homogeneous systems, but hybrid constellations as heterogeneous networks of intra-activities, interactivities and interactions. Rammert also suggests a break with the hierarchical mode of integration, which mode is effective for fixed inputs, routine processing and stable environments, but ineffective for changing inputs, many variations in processes and dynamic environments. In this he follows the interactional mode of integration as earlier has been developed in distributed computing (Rumelhart/McClelland, 1986), social computing (Hewitt, 1977, Star, 1989), socionics (Rammert, 1998, Meister et al. 2007) and distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1996). Contrary to the hierarchical mode, distributed processes do not require functional specialisation, pre-programmed fixed rules or hierarchical integration, but they show integration as a natural process of loose coupling, overlapping activities, experimental adaptation and a step-by-step stabilisation of a common frame for the interactions (Hutchins, 1996). Rammert applies this approach in his concept of distributed agency. In the interactive mode of integration (called ‘framed interactivity’) the technological units are given more freedom of choice and higher levels of agency in order to enrich their capacity of assistance and to strengthen their role as relatively autonomous agents. theories of interaction In this sketch I mention only two recent models of interaction. R. Milner’s bigraph model is focussed on message passing, R. Kaehr’s diamond model on agents and their reflectional/interactional activities. In R. Milner’s (2005, 2006, 2007) bigraph theory the metaphorical space of [computer] algorithms is mixed with the space of physical reality. Bigraphical reactive systems are a model of information flow in which both locality (of sender, message, agent and receiver) and connectivity are prominent. These concepts [locality and connectivity] are treated independently ( e.g. orthogonally [forming a right angle in a vector space, distributed over two dimensions] ). 115 The aim of the bigraph model is a theory that guides the specification, design and programming of systems and to guide future adaptations of them. E.g. a model of the internet: where you are (locality) is independent of whom you can talk to (connectivity). The bigraph model presupposes an epistemologically uniform, homogeneous and unique world of physical and informational events. R. Kaehr (in Seifert, 2008) phrases this as ‘Everything in this world is changing but the world in which everything is changing doesn’t change’. R. Kaehr’s (2008, see also in Seifert, 2008) diamond theory is turning to a world model where there are many worlds in which things are changing and in which worlds themselves are changing too. The diamond model has three features: 1 the idea of irreducible multi-medial contextures [e.g. sound, text, video] and their qualitative incomparability (sound, text, video as logically different and distributed conceptually in a heterarchical sense); 2 the possibility of mapping the (outer) environment of a contexture (media) in itself – inner environment for reflectionality (contextures ( unlike systems) have to reflect their environment in their own domain) ; 3 the possibility of actions and complementary counter-actions on a basic level of conceptualisation and formalisation. Interactionality is not primarily about topological movement (from one place to another), but about how we move by interaction from one medium to another medium [sound – text - video] of a complex knowledge space. The diamond model is not opting for a principally homogeneous global field of informational and physical events, but for a discontexturality of different media, situations and contexts of meaning. Messages in the diamond model are conceived as polycontextural and as belonging simultaneously to different contextures of irreducible kinds of meaning. In this pluriversal world-model [message-]keys are always polysemic and its acceptance has to be negotiated by reflectional and interactional activities. Kaehr proposes an interventional design: from interactions to a design of interactionality, from global to pluriversal contexturality, from locality to positionality of contextures, from mobility to metamorphosis between contextures, from operations to operationality in polycontextural situations, from connectivity to mediation between contextures, from a mail model of interaction in bigraphs to an encounter model of interactionality/reflectionality and intervention (where intervention is interaction & reflection on the behaviour of a partner-agent, intended to change the meta-rules of the partner-agent in order to stay in the game of computation and interaction). See the next links for the formalisation of these theoretical assumptions of Milner’s bigraph theory (2007) and Kaehr’s diamond theory (2008). interactional intelligence The interactional approach in psycho-social sciences can be seen as an integration of three traditional metatheoretical approaches:: 1 mentalistic (cognitive processes, information processes, decision making, learning, personality), 2 biological (genetics, maturation), 3 environmental (Magnusson, 1988). Lemke (1995) suggests an interacting ‘ecology’ for humans, including body and brain and tools and environments and calls this an ‘ecosocial system’. If we are made by our participation in networks of micro-ecologies of situated activities, the conditions of what we can become are determined by the global structure and dynamics of the ecosocial systems that these networks help constitute. There is no master control program that determines the form of the patterns it achieves. There are only regulating and constraining inputs to the total dynamics of the systems, which are most of the time probabilistic, uncertain and unpredictable. There are networks of nodes with their connections like events, moments, practices, activities, communities of practice, historical periods, stages of life, texts etc. Psycho-social interaction-patterns describe behavior as a function of the continuous interaction of Person and Situation - B=f(P,S). These interactions are a way of integrating different [..] into new [..], in which [temporary or more stable] ‘assemblages’ of [..] emerge. Not only humans are active agents in interactional processes, also technological artefacts will enact psycho-social ‘roles’. But which kind of ‘roles’ could or should be enacted convicingly? Howto choose types of roles: active – passive; user – used; providing positive – negative feedback; dominant – recessive; symmetrical (mirroring behavior) or complementary (e.g. assertive-submisssive, up-down, superior-inferior), will there be something like ‘role-distance’ (the freedom and flexibility to choose roles)? And how will mimicking human-human-communication (enacting ‘quasi others’ (Ihde, 1990)), develop into being ‘genuine others’ (vdBerg, 2009)? How could technological artifacts fit into human psycho-social interactions? Some hope could be gained from the suggestion that interactions are largely non-conceptual and non-intellectual. Nevertheless ‘largely’ is not ‘completely’, so it still has to be asked how technologial artifacts possibly could jump from token-experience to type-knowledge (category- en concept-formation) and from that to type-governed behavior. Technological artifacts lack a lot of the linguistic, nonverbal and inferential resources humans have available in finding the intelligibility of actions and events – this asymmetry seems at first sight to limit substantially the scope of interactions between humans and technological artifacts. Can technological artifacts be compensated with computationally available alternatives (Suchman, 1987)? What can be explored from the perspectives of different interwoven domains (e.g. mathematics, physics, biology, fysiology, psychology, sociology etc) is interaction as reciprocal activation in connected or connecting nodes, in and through which interaction-patterns unfold. Analysis in different domains at different levels reveals different ways in which nodes-connections-networks come into being and how being embodied and embedded puts constraints on pattern-formations (ongoing interactions like S[R]<==>R[S]-ensembles, sensations, perceptions, experience, behavior and knowledge). reflexible eventities vdBerg (2009) studied the possible effects of AmI on the human self, working out amongst others suggestions in Aarts et al (2003) about "a multiplicity of the self – multiple identities" (2003, 34), "co-creation of imagined selfs" (2003,37), "extended self" (2003,218). vdBerg argues for a ‘plurality of [human] identities’, ‘different role patterns’, which are triggered by ‘scripts’ (emergent properties of the situation, containing clues (e.g. embodied rules, strategy-generating principles) expressing what is going on in a a situation and motivating role choices) and by frames (principles of organization which govern the subjective meaning we assign to social events). In the development of these ‘plurality of identities’ technological artifacts according to vdBerg may come to function as ‘genuine others’ in the construction and expression of identities. If technological artifacts could function as ‘genuine others’, the function of technological ‘genuine selves’ seems to be assumed as well, technological artifacts evolving from intelligible tools for human users to interactive agents with intelligence, from a role as tokens of the human self to types of technological selves. So the question can be asked where and how there could emerge something like a self (or perhaps also a plurality of selves) of technological artifacts. Ismael (2007) distinguises three types of dynamical organization as models of selves:
So a candidate for ‘technological selves’ could possibly be a (self)representational loop. What should this loop contain? Ismael (2007) suggests internal maps of the situation with ‘objective components’ reflecting the environment and ‘reflexive components’ tracking the system’s own location. And a rich body of simultaneous dispositions that permit differential response to the same stimulus depending on the values of self-locating parameters. Applied to technological artifacts, building a (self)representational loop into a system would give it a way of reorganizing its own internal architecture in response to external exigencies, with speed and flexibility. (Self)representation would add a way of [temporarely] decoupling the ‘body’ from the environment and give way to adaptation by corrective judgements by adding degrees of internal freedom that allow the system to adjust spontaneously to changes of the situation which would lead to a much more robust balance. These self-centered maps are not fictional portraits of an inner subject, but portraits of the world, centered reflexively on the interactionally embodied intelligence – (self)representations as maps we (and –why not? – also technological artifacts) steer by. The picture Ismael draws, resembles pretty much the way our by now familiar navigators work. For technical and commercial reasons the present navigators are overloaded with (partly outdated) information which very well could be outsourced. The maps e.g. could be mainframed on constantly updated servers and be fed ad hoc to the navigators. So could the speech-data (e.g. sampled voices of any familiar person could be mainframed and used in other contexts as well). The core of any navigator is a basic routine, containing the position vector: location, direction and magnitude (in this case speed), the destination coordinates and the next directive to be communicated (‘Take a turn to...’). The map (e.g. as set of possible roads for cars) only puts specific constraints on specific vehicle-bound pathways (cf the straighter pathways of an airplane). Technological artifacts that have to communicate with humans should be able to interact in different ways. What should they have ‘on board’ for that? I think preferably a bare miminum. E.g. which natural language has to be used for communication with humans? The technological artifact should contain a communication-vector (a kind of coordinate in the ‘linguistic space’, like the location-coordinator of the navigator in the ‘geographical space’) and this vector only needs to contain some variables with values for e.g. language (e.g. American English or Swedish) and register (e.g. common or juridical) and these variables could be determined by the access-keys of the present humans or by deriving those keys from their conversation. The data that are necessary for enacting the actual conversational role of the technological artifacts (e.g. giving responses to questions, given suggestions or directives etc) could be outsourced and retrieved ad hoc. If a technological artifact is supposed to assist humans in a flexible way, it will have at least two interdependent steering tasks: it has to steer itself and it has to steer/guide/influence the networks it’s participating in, including interacting humans. Which functions of a specific technological artifact are activated in the interaction, related to this ‘double steering’, is reciprocally and continuousely determined by
The ideal prototype of a potentially functionally complete technological artifact (abbreviated as ‘tech’) would be a kind of stemcell-tech, which would contain the basics for the activation of any possible function. These stemcell-techs could provide the building blocks for a technology of cooperating techs with specific, locally activated functions, a technology that could play any role in any domain on any level. Let’s start looking for these reflexible eventities. Links to places on this page where you can find abstracts of / about: text in abstracts between [ ] = notes OBW Aarts, E. & S. Marzano (eds), The New Everyday. Views on Ambient Intelligence, 2003 Actor-Network-Theory Bachnik, J.M. & Ch.J. Quinn jr (eds), Situated Meaning. Inside and Outside in Japanese Self, Society and Language, 1994 Berg, B. van den, The Situated Self: identity in a world of ambient intelligence, 2009 Cowart, M., Embodied Cognition, 2006 Cowx, I.G. (ed), Interactions between fish and birds : implications for management, 2003 Endler, N.S. & D. Magnusson, Interactional Psychology and Personality, 1976 Hausman, C.R., Metaphor and Art. Interactionism and Reference in the Verbal and Nonverbal Arts, 1989 Have, P. ten & G. Psathas (eds), Situated Order : studies in the social organization of talk and embodied activities, 1995 Helm, D.T. e.o. (eds), The Interactional Order. New Directions in the Study of Social Order, 1989 Hutchins, E., Distributed Cognition, 1995 intelligence interaction Ismael, J.T., The Situated Self, 2007 Kirshner, D. & J.A. Whitson (ed), Situated cognition : social, semiotic, and psychological perspectives, 1997 Kisser, T., Selbstbewußtsein und Interaktion : Spinozas Theorie der Individualität, 1998 Lave, J. & E. Wenger, Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, 1991 Magnusson, D., Individual Development from an Interactional Perspective. A longitudinal study, 1988 Magnusson, D. (ed), Toward a Psychology of Situations: An Interactional Perspective, 1981 networks Niehoff, D., The language of life : how cells communicate in health and disease, 2005 Resnick, L.B., Discourse, tools, and reasoning : essays on situated cognition, 1997 Seifert, U, J.H. Kim & A. Moore (eds), Paradoxes of interactivity : perspectives for media theory, human-computer interaction, and artistic investigations, 2008 Shibutani, T., Society and Personality. An Interactionst Approach to Social Psychology, 1961 Suchman, L.A., Plans and situated actions : the problem of human-machine communication, 1987 Thornborrow, J., Power talk: language and interaction in institutional discourse, 2002 Watzlawick, P., J.H. Beavin, D.D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Communication. A study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes, 1968. Wilson, M., Six Views of Embodied Cognition, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2002, 9 (4), 625-636 Links naar abstracts in het Nederlands Arts, W.A., H.W.A. Hilhorst & F. Wester. Betekenis en interactie. Symbolisch interactionisme als onderzoeksperspectief, 1985 Prins, A.W., Uit Verveling, 2007 Schuurman, J.G. e.a. Ambient Intelligence. Toekomst van de zorg of zorg van de toekomst? Rathenau studie 50, 2007 Sites actor-network-theory wiki – abstract on this page ambient intelligence wiki constructionism wiki - abstract on this page distributed cognition wiki – abstract on this page embodied cognition - abstract on this page human-based computation wiki – abstract on this page interactional expertise wiki – abstract on this page interactive computation wiki – abstract on this page situated cognition wiki - abstract on this page situatedself.org (website Bibi van den Berg) theory of multiple intelligences wiki Literature Aarts, E. & S. Marzano (eds), The New Everyday. Views on Ambient Intelligence, 2003 >> H. Arrow, J.E. McGrath & J. L. Berdahl, Small groups as complex systems : formation, coordination, development and adaptation, 2000 Arts, W.A., H.W.A. Hilhorst & F. Wester. Betekenis en interactie. Symbolisch interactionisme als onderzoeksperspectief, 1985 Bachnik, J.M. & Ch.J. Quinn jr (eds), Situated Meaning. Inside and Outside in Japanese Self, Society and Language, 1994 Berg, B. van den, The Situated Self: identity in a world of ambient intelligence, 2009 [ link to this PhD thesis ] Cattell, R.B., Intelligence: Its structure, growth, and action, 1987 >> Clancey, W.J., Situated Cognition; On Human Knowledge and Computer Representations, 1997 >> Colllins, R., Four sociological traditions : selected readings, 1994 Cowart, M., Embodied Cognition, 2006 Cowx, I.G., Interactions between fish and birds : implications for management, 2003 Endler, N.S. & D. Magnusson (eds), Interactional Psychology and Personality, 1976 Eysenck, M.W., Intelligence. In M. W. Eysenck, (ed.), The Blackwell dictionary of cognitive psychology (pp. 192–193), 1994 >> Gallegati, M., A.P. Kirman & M. Marsili (eds), The complex dynamics of economic interaction : essays in economics and econophysics, 2004 Gardner, H., Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century, 1999 Gardner, H., Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences,1983 >>Goldin, D., S.Smolka and P.Wegner, Interactive Computation: The New Paradigm, 2006. Hausman, C.R., Metaphor and Art. Interactionism and Reference in the Verbal and Nonverbal Arts, 1989 Have, P. ten & G. Psathas (eds), Situated order : studies in the social organization of talk and embodied activities, 1995 Helm, D.T. e.o. (eds), The Interactional Order. New Directions in the Study of Social Order, 1989 >> Hendriks-Jansen, H., Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, Evolution, and Human Thought, 1996 Hutchins, E., Cognition in the Wild, 1996 Ismael, J.T., The Situated Self, 2007 >> Jaccard, J., Interaction effects in factorial analysis of variance, 1998 Kirshner, D. & J.A. Whitson, Situated cognition : social, semiotic, and psychological perspectives, 1997 Kisser, T., Selbstbewußtsein und Interaktion : Spinozas Theorie der Individualität, 1998 Lave, J. & E. Wenger, Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, 1991 >> Lux, T., S. Reitz & E. Samanidou (eds), Nonlinear dynamics and heterogeneous interacting agents, 2005 Magnusson, D., Individual Development from an Interactional Perspective. A longitudinal study, 1988 Magnusson, D. (ed), Toward a Psychology of Situations: An Interactional Perspective, 1981 Niehoff, D., The language of life : how cells communicate in health and disease, 2005 >> Nooteboom, B., Methodological interactionism: theory and application to the firm and to the building of trust, 2006 Prins, A.W., Uit Verveling, 2007 Resnick, L.B., Discourse, tools, and reasoning : essays on situated cognition, 1997 Schuurman, J.G. e.a. Ambient Intelligence. Toekomst van de zorg of zorg van de toekomst? Rathenau studie 50, 2007 Seifert, U, J.H. Kim & A. Moore (eds), Paradoxes of interactivity : perspectives for media theory, human-computer interaction, and artistic investigations, 2008 Shibutani, T., Society and Personality. An Interactionst Approach to Social Psychology, 1961 Spearman, C., General intelligence, objectively determined and measured. American Journal of Psychology, 15, 201–293, 1904 Sternberg, R.J., Beyond IQ: A Triarchic Theory of Intelligence, 1985 Suchman, L.A., Plans and situated actions : the problem of human-machine communication, 1987 Thornborrow, J., Power talk : language and interaction in institutional discourse, 2002 Turkle, S., The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, 2005 Watzlawick, P., J.H. Beavin, D.D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Communication. A study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes, 1968. Wilson, M., Six Views of Embodied Cognition, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2002, 9 (4), 625-636 Wright, D., S. Gutwirth, M. Friedewald et al., Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence, 2008 Zelkha, Eli; Epstein, Brian (1998), "From Devices to Ambient Intelligence", Digital Living Room Conference, June 1998 In de volgende bibliotheken: Sociale Wetenschappen: Small groups as complex systems : formation, coordination, development and adaptation / Holly Arrow, Joseph E. McGrath, Jennifer L. Berdahl, 2000 Bibl. Sociale Wetensch. 254 79 [ gereserveerd ] Sociale Wetenschappen: Interaction effects in factorial analysis of variance / James Jaccard 1998 Bibl. Sociale Wetensch. 060 2 DL.118 Interaction effects in multiple regression / James Jaccard, Robert Turrisi 2003 Bibl. Sociale Wetensch. 060 2 DL.72 Four sociological traditions : selected readings / ed. by Randall Collins 1994 Bibl. Sociale Wetensch. 420 101 C Letteren: Power talk : language and interaction in institutional discourse / Joanna Thornborrow 2002 Bibl. Letteren 9.041 M02 [ gereserveerd ] Economie: Situated cognition : on human knowledge and computer representations / William J. Clancey 1997 Bibl. Economie en Bedrijfskunde/Ruimtelijke Wetenschappen BH CD 52 Economie: Nonlinear dynamics and heterogeneous interacting agents / Thomas Lux, Stefan Reitz, Eleni Samanidou (Eds.) 2005 Bibl. Economie en Bedrijfskunde/Ruimtelijke Wetenschappen EA A 1 dl.550 Economie: The complex dynamics of economic interaction : essays in economics and econophysics / Mauro Gallegati, Alan P. Kirman, Matteo Marsili (eds.) 2004 Bibl. Economie en Bedrijfskunde/Ruimtelijke Wetenschappen EA A 1 dl.531 Abstracts in this file text in abstracts between [ ] = notes OBW Aarts, E. & Stefano Marzano, The New Everyday. Views on Ambient Intelligence, 2003 [ a Philips product ] Technology: it’s how we use it that makes the difference. Looking for an equilibrium between People, Planet and Profit (PPP: society, environment, business). A more prominent interaction with smaller/hidden technology will enhance our quality of life. AmI will inject new intelligence into the system that constitutes our ecology and change what it means to be human, overcoming the limitations of time and space. e.g. web-based education in the remote parts of Brazil and Africa, service for older people (health monitoring, home diagnostics, shopping & delivery service). Key elements of AmI: embedded (integrated into the environment), context-aware (recognize the person and his situational context), personalized (tailored towareds personal needs), adaptive (change in response to the person), anticipatory (anticipate personal desires withoud conscious mediation). 15 Reeves & Nash (The Media Equation): man-machine interaction should be intuitive, multi-modal and based on emotion. 22 Alvin Toffler: agricultural > industrial > knowledge age. Identity in terms of access and usage instead of in terms of ownership, status and possession. 23ff 6 types of societies: 1 mosaic (kaleidoscopic, multi-tasking), 2 collective, 3 discovery, 4 experience, 5 care, 6 sustainability society. 26 trends: consumption > experience > transformation, products > brands > people, material > emotion > life , passive > receptive > active > co-creative. 28 need to be open for differences in culture, values, resources and restriction. Human intelligence: curiosity, investigate, ask, doubt, wonder, communication, exchange ideas, emotion, interaction, intuition, serendipity. Critics: Kenan Malik: meaning lies in the social world, which machines don’t share. Unlikely that machines will ever learn to interact with people in a ‘natural way’; superfluous gadgets for the few rich; waste if not a real improvement of the quality of life. Positive: better communication, reducing transportation (environmental gain), cheaper teaching aids. 34 multiplicity of the self – multiple identities, pluralistic culture of our own. Bauman: liquid modernity - we are becoming more complex, more flexible and constantly changing. Narrative identity-positions – ofter conflicting value systems within one personality. 35 Contextual triggers for manifestations and enactments of I-positions. AmI should be sensitive to our inner dialogue of variable I-positions, learning from users voices and moods over time. 37 AmI may contribute to guided transformation to a greater degree of self-actualization by providing smart tools for selfreflection and co-creation of imagined selfs. 38 People will be actively involved in co-creating, customizing and training their AmI’s. 46 Experience design towards anticipated experiences. 49 Paul Virillio: extensive (durability, presence) and intensive (accelerated) time – passing of time: 1 on/off (e.g. 9.11), 2 repetitive (e.g. seasons), 3 constand event (e.g. learning time). 57 Development of new types of sensitive and responsive, flexible ‘skins’ (cf touchscreens as embryo). 95 Major stumble block: providing the energy for the communication links. 100 Key factor [ many in this book! ] middleware that should bring together different devices, software and services from various manufacturers and suppliers. 128 metadata giving meaning (semantics) to the context and the content. 132 Go for the flow – complete absorption in action, suspension of time, freedom and the sense of pleasure, fulfilling experience. 137 objects have functions, systems have behavior, entities have motives (purposes, goals). What does technology have? 140 Stefano Marzano: the ultimate goal of our species is omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience [ hubris? ]. 141 Freedom arises from 5 different motivations: productivity, showing off, caring, exploring and belonging. 142 People are always interested in expressing their personality. 144 wetware – technology integrated and incorporated into our bodies, starting in the medical arena. 146 Different standards for different devices/applications: ZigBee (status, control), Bluetooth (data transfer, audio), 802.11b/a/g[/n] (video), higher rates (bit/s). Powering the devices in the house will be a problem. 158 trend – people increasingly want easy RICE: Right access to Information, Communication and Entertainment, they want to feel connected and in control. 170 3 dimensions of context: 1 self (the device itself, where it is and in what state), 2 environment, 3 activity. e.g. a mobile phone on the backseat of a car which I’m driving should not ring but take a message or connect to a communication-system in the car. 190 ‘ambient’ refers to atmosphere, environment, feel, setting, mood & character. 199 Digital perception of each other’s ‘aura of interaction expectations’ could lead to ‘matching interactions’, which would radically change social behavior en networking. 212 Kevin Kelly: As we shape technology, it shapes us > network culture. 215 Nochols & Schwartz: 5 R’s model: rules, roles, relationships, realities, response-patterns. Trust in and acceptance of distributed intelligence only if we are part of it, having the freedom to exercise choice and control. 217 The nature of the guided experience should be both ethically appropriate and qualitatively desirable. 218 Our emotional needs are history, identity and sharing stories. Narrations construct and maintain the sense of self and identity. Collections of objects contribute to the creation of the ‘extended self’ (network of meanings, attitudes, values mediated by objects). 221 Intimate media are central to a person’s sense of feeling at home in the world. 227 But the weight of connectivity, services and information could not only ‘lighten up’, but also inhibit the sense of freedom. 226 A man in Australia married his TV – the best companion he ever had > finding happiness with technology – otherwise lonely. 231 knowledge cannot be put in a database, it cannot be extracted and codified, but has to be managed by smart connectivity, intelligent agents, concept mining and smart databases. [ news sharing embedded in knowledge sharing ]. David Snowden: People know more than they can say, and they can say more than they can write down. Interactive tv: from passive receptors to content producers, but high intelligence is required for personalized, tailored and timely content [ where do we see this, e.g. in blogs and youtubes? ] 235 AmI can embody, incorporate and transcend our stories [ the tales that touch on our lives ] , expressing our needs and most fundamental and intimate desires. [ convert human power to electricity, stored in cells – already realized for small lights and radio’s – howto build a system that powers up longer lasting cells, providing 5 or 12 v? ] 239 Philips strong in storage, connectivity and display > light weight and more efficient. 242 trend: shift from material fulfillment [ ownership ] to sensorial experience and personal satisfaction through empowerment [ > use ]. 243 Local diversity of contextualized technology could be realized by value-co-creation through the users. 244ff Bridge the timegap between technological development and public acceptance by establishing cooperation between the inventors and the users/improvers/consumers, while placing people’s needs at the center. [ 2 hands on an A5 touchpad, input-mode, variable user-defined functions of combinations of vingertip-taps (also simultaneously) > very high speed of ‘play’ possible ] 256 Palm: Keep the simple things simple and the complex things possible. 258 extrinsic intelligence (hardwired, dedicated, user-flexible, known tech, user intelligence) – intrinsic intelligence (software, personalized, system-flexible, sophisticated tech, leverage intelligence of the technology/system). [ preset and perset (personal settings) – transportability of perset very important ] 263 trend product-oriented > customer(-experience)-oriented. Transformation through innovation > more value for lower costs. 265 intelligence = the best and most appropriate information, knowledge and wisdom. 266ff 4 stages of branding – 269 shift from developing and communicating brands as belief systems towards providing practical and human responses in the emerging brand manifestations of AmI – 4th stage brand as living ideas, transformed by the people while they transform people’s lives in meaningful and human ways. 270 stance vs modernism (as not sustainable, alienating with growing social inequality and dissociation from technology) to postmodernism (subjective, ambiguity, access, playfulness, experience, emotions, spirituality, rediscovery of meaning). Solutions should be sustainable, meaningful, culturally relevant and socially ethical. AmI should restore society’s faith in the role of technology – on a more human-focused, sustainable pathway. 284 competitive partnerships between companies in networks, e.g. Philips + Nike, Philips + Levy (softwear). Premise and promise of AmI: the seamless linking of devices and services in our environment with open standards for interconnection. B+BC=value-creation. 287 Example of innovation by recombination: Philips + Douwe Egberts > senseo. 289 Gary Hamel: The last 100 years wealth was a function of time, diligence and knowledge, now wealth becomes a function of creativity, connectivity and courage. Project examples: nebula (interactive lights/displays in bedroom), garden (interactive flower projections in underground), aurora (electronic wallpaper, write by touching), i-Pronto (user-programmable remote control & browser), homelab (AmI test-environment), phenom (showing and sharing photo’s), wwice (space for meeting/contacting/sharing-music while on the move), streamium (personalized digital audio), easy access & LISY (voice-driven interactive media-search-system), PML (Physical Markup Language – room as browser), CDS (multimedia projectors, surround vision, reality-meeting/conference, reality fusion games), MIME (tags on personal artefacts, activated by association), Q4Plugged (couches with electronic devices), Smartmirror (combi mirror & interactive lcd-toch-screen), Toons and Pogo (interactive gadgets for kids), Connected Planet (internet + mobile acces to information, entertainment, communication), Camps & Mads (context-aware mobile phones, event-handling pickup and select from context – opportunity discovery), SPICE (Speech Interface for Consumer Electronics – control devices by ‘conversation’), HICS (Highly Customized and Contextualized Solutions, SOP Solution Oriented Partnerships – example: food for people whose acces to food is limited), Open Tools (Open Desk, Open Frame, Open Mirror...), LIME and Pl@net (Living memory for communities, sensitive to geographical and social context, learning from what people do with it and where and when they do it, dynamically filtering content and redistributing it according to context – the physical location of the related devices become as much part of the interface as the screen itself), LCD+ (wearable electronics, integrating music and mobile devices in jackets), New Nomads (body area networks, specific workwear, e.g. electronic aids of flight attendents, hospital staff, maintenance workers etc integrated into their work-clothing, further: streetwear, kidswear (location!), sportswear (biometrics)). from ambient intelligence wiki : The Ambient intelligence vision is not without criticism [See for example: David Wright, Serge Gutwirth, Michael Friedewald et al., Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence, Springer, Dordrecht, 2008]. Its immersive, personalized, context-aware and anticipatory characteristics bring up societal, political and cultural concerns about the loss of consumer privacy, power concentration in large organizations, fear for an increasingly individualized, fragmented society and hyperreal environments where the virtual is indistinguishable from the real (hyperreality). Several research groups and communities are investigating the social-economical, political and cultural aspects of ambient intelligence. New thinking on Ambient Intelligence distances itself therefore from some of the original characteristics such as adaptive and anticipatory behaviour and emphasizes empowerment and participation to place control in the hands of people instead of organizations. Arts, W.A., H.W.A. Hilhorst & F. Wester. Betekenis en interactie. Symbolisch interactionisme ( SI ) als onderzoeksperspectief, 1985 9 Symbolisch interactionisme wordt zo genoemd omdat interactieprocessen via symbolen verlopen – omdat de actoren gedeelde betekenissen hanteren in hun interacties. De wortels ervan liggen in het pragmatisme van C.S. Pierce, William James en John Dewey en in de Chicago-traditie van W.I. Thomas en C.H. Cooley. 10 G.H. Mead wordt beschouwd als de geestelijk vader van het symbolisch interactionisme [ als socialogische stroming ]. Mead: de mens wordt gekenmerkt door een intentioneel bewustzijn en door zelfbewustzijn. 12 Premissen van het SI: mensen reageren op basis van de betekenis die de dingen voor hen hebben; die betekenis komt voort uit de sociale interactie; die betekenis wordt gemodificeerd door een interpretatief proces. 15 SI heeft een voorkeur voor participerende observatie, beginnend met sensitizing concepts [globale inzichten > tentatieve begripsvorming], daarna van exploration naar inspection (vanuit een theoretisch gezichtspunt > operationele definities). 18 Gedrag is voor Blumer een actief en onbepaald procesmatig rolgedrag (‘role-making’), voor Kuhn een geconditioneerd, voorspelbaar strcutureel rolgedrag (‘role-playing’). 20 Onderzoeker en onderzochten zijn in hetzelfde interactieproces opgenomen. De onderzoeker werkt zowel met alledaagse termen als met wetenschappelijke begrippen. 98 J. de Jong-Gierveld, Begripsvorming in symbolisch-interactionistisch perspectief. De ontwikkeling van een operationele definitie van eenzaamheid. 101 Voortang van nominale definitie (arbitrair geformuleerd aan het einde van de verkennende fase, cf Blumer’s sensitizing concepts) > reële definitie (concepten verbonden aan daarbinnen te onderscheiden dimensies) > operationele definitie (begrip gekoppeld aan meetprocedures en empirische eenheden). Denzin: triangulatie: het gebruiken van verschillende waarnemingsmethoden naast elkaar. 110 > constructie van een gemisintensiteitsschaal. Actor-Network-Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor-network_theory ANT has been developed by Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, John Law and others. ANT is a 'material-semiotic' method. This means that it maps relations that are simultaneously material (between things) and 'semiotic' (between concepts). It assumes that many relations are both material and 'semiotic' (e.g. the interactions in a bank involve both people and their ideas, and technologies. Together these form a single network). - they form an apparently coherent whole. Such actor-networks are potentially transient, existing in a constant making and re-making. This means that relations need to be repeatedly 'performed' or the network will dissolve. networks of relations are not intrinsically coherent, and may indeed contain conflicts. The ANT approach is related to other versions of material-semiotics (and notably the work of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault and feminist scholar Donna Haraway). It can also be seen as a way of being faithful to the insights of ethnomethodology. There are also obvious links to symbolic interactionist approaches such as the newer forms of grounded theory like situational analysis that seek to frame social circumstances as various forms of relationships associated with situations. Initially created in an attempt to understand processes of innovation and knowledge-creation in science and technology, the approach drew on existing work in STS, on studies of large technological systems. analyse large scale technological developments in an even-handed manner to include political, organizational, legal, technical and scientific factors. A key concept is translation: [a multifaceted interaction in which] innovators attempt to create a forum, a central network by: 1. Problematisation ( problems to be solved, relevant actors, primary actor: obligatory passage point (OPP) ) 2. Interessement ( getting actors interested and involved ) 3. Enrolment ( Actors accept the roles that have been defined for them during interessement ) 4. Mobilization of allies ( from enrolment to active support ) Intermediaries are entities which make no difference (..) Mediators are entities which multiply difference and so should be the object of study. Their outputs cannot be predicted by their inputs. From an ANT point of view sociology has tended to treat too much of the world as intermediaries. ANT assumes that all the elements in a network, human and non-human, can and should be described in the same terms. This is called the principle of generalized symmetry. [ OBW from asymmetry (humans better than machines) to symmetry (equal performance) to asymmetry (machines better than humans) – depending on the tasks: no specific (a)symmetry will determine the overall picture ] The rationale for this is that differences between them are generated in the network of relations, and should not be presupposed. ANT defines, for instance, Actants to denote human and non-human actors, and assumes that actants in a network take the shape that they do by virtue of their relations with one another. If taken to its logical conclusion, nearly any actor can be considered merely a sum of other, smaller actors. Punctualisation (or abstraction, reification) is dealing with something as a single object (e.g. car as composed of a lot of different 'actors').The conception of agency does not presuppose intentionality; agency is located neither in human "subjects" nor in non-human "objects," but in heterogeneous associations of humans and nonhumans. ANT case studies are often highly descriptive and, not providing explanations, can seem pointless to some critics. ANT - like all comparable methods of study - requires judgement calls from the researcher as to what actors are important within a network and which are not. But in the absence of 'out-of-network' criteria for judging the relevance of actors these problems can appear theoretically unmanageable for the ANT researcher. ANT work is at risk, in theory at least, of degenerating into endless chains of association which many non-ANT researchers would consider irrelevant. Other relevant perspectives such as social constructionism, social network theory, Normalization Process Theory, Diffusion of Innovations theory, focus on elements of social life that are known to be relevant and do not insist on the case study method or the agency of objects. This makes them straightforward alternatives to ANT. http://carbon.ucdenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/ant_dff.html Theirry Bardini: An actor network, then, is the act linked together with all of its influencing factors (which again are linked), producing a network. (..) Both human actors and nonhuman participants (whether artifacts or naturalized constructs like bacteria) were equally actants in the sense of Greimas' narrative semiotics: they were defined by how they acted and were acted on in the networks of practices. (..) Jay Lemke: humans and nonhumans are defined relationally as arguments or functors in the network (..) This leads to a relational epistemology which rejects the naive positivist view of objects or actors as existing in themselves prior to any participation in ecosocial and semiotic networks of interactions (including the interactions by which they are observed, named, etc.) (..) ANT notes that the topology of networks is in general non-local, and further that semiotic artifacts are often the 'boundary objects' that mediate non-local, scale-breaking interconnections. This leads to a powerful generalization of ecosocial systems theory to include network topologies (and the rarer laminar topologies) and makes possible a general inquiry into scale-respecting vs. scale-breaking dynamics. (..) Bowker & Star: nature and society are not causes but consequences of human scientific and technical work. The position that a fact may be seen as a consequence, and not as an antecedent, is axiomatic to the American pragmatist approach. (..) Bernd Frohmann: ANT's theoretical richness derives from its refusal to reduce explanations to either natural, social, or discursive categories while recognizing the significance of each (Latour, 1993, 91); "the stability and form of artifacts should be seen as a function of the interaction of heterogeneous elements as these are shaped and assimilated into a network" (Law 1990, 113). (..) Reijo Miettinen: Latour wants to transcend the dualism of knowledge and artifacts as explained either by society (social constructionisms) or by nature (realism). (..) simultaneous construction of culture, society and nature (Latour 1992a, 281) (..) ANT raises the challenge of studying reality as transitional in its becoming, and as trajectories of creation. (..) Nancy Van House: closing the black box, in Latour's terms, of disputes allows people to take the work of others as a resource and move on, rather than continually reproducing and questioning it. (..) Methodogically, ANT has two major approaches. One is to "follow the actor," via interviews and ethnographic research. The other is to examine inscriptions (including texts, but also images of many sorts, databases, and the like). (..) Other ANT technical terms: Inscription ( A process of creating technical artifacts that would ensure the protection of an actor's interests (Latour, 1992)) Irreversibility ( The degree to which it is subsequently impossible to returnto a point where alternative possibilities exist (Walsham, 1997)) Bachnik, J.M. & Ch.J. Quinn jr (ed), Situated Meaning. Inside and Outside in Japanese Self, Society and Language, 1994 The relational concepts inside (uchi) and outside (soto), that are linked to the concepts ‘self’ and ‘society’ are a major organizational focus for Japanese self, social life and language. These concepts don’t point at a fixed social framework, but function as ‘indexical coordinates’ which are necessarely centered on a situated self and are used to form interpersonal relationships in which self and social order reciprocally constitute one another through being situated in social context. Japanese social order is situated, i.e. social order inheres in the very specific circumstances of its particualar enactments. Starting point is not an ‘external world’ which is referred to, but the situationally located relationships among speaker, hearer and scene. Meaning is seen as located, rather than being ‘about’ the external, context is seen as reciprocally shaped by speech, rather than being external to speech. The situational elements of interactional practices become central, taking precedence over apparently fixed hierarchical distinctions. This approach considers space as socially, situationally and flexibly defined. The balancing of two perspectives is the crux of uchi/soto organization: specific human beings engaged in social situations with a general order that transcends situations. 5 Importance of ‘wrapping’ in Japanese society, whether a gift or talk. Participants constitute social situations and thereby participate in a dynamic that includes the mutual process of their constituting and being constituted by social order. 6 uchi (inside) – soto (outside), ura (in-back, hidden from others) – omote (in-front, surface appearance), ninjoo (personal feelings) – giri (social obligations), honne (inner life of feelings) – tatemae (social obligations), etc. 8 the organization of context is closely related to the organization of both self and society. Ethics, morality and possibly even social order are defined by the situation. Situational parameters, formulated by relationships between participants, seem essential to define hierarchy appropriately. 9 The ease with which one shifts from omote to ura and back is regarded as the measure for social maturity. 11 cultural meaning is rather pragmatic than semantic. Japan: pragmatic meaning closely linked to cultural meaning. 12 index: smoke is an index of fire. Indexical: draw attention to by pointing at. 14 The context in which the learning is accomplished, becomes an integral part of the process of learning. 15 Context and process by which self and social life are constituted are seen as integral to the organization of both self and social order. 16 a perspective on structures that includes ‘agency’. 20 self and context as two sides of the same coin, each being the recto or verso for the other. 24 based on Pierce’s focus on pragmatism, escaping Cartesian dualism. 25 a wide range of phenomena are indexed, like social distance, status, relationships, settings, topics, affective and epistemological stances of social participants. Inside/outside, self/society, intimacy and socially required discipline are inversely related – selfexpression in relation to the degree of social constraint that is perceived appropriate. 26 As deictic anchor point uchi is not an individual (I, me), but a speaker located within a collectivity (we, us, the ‘ie’ – the basic unit of social organization, the family) 151 degrees of ura and omote in the rooms of a house: ura: storeroom, bedroom, workroom, kitchen omote: parlor 4, parlor 3, parlor 2, parlor 1 (3 and 4 are not connected to the backrooms) > different settings for different ( informal...formal ) meetings with different persons (family...guests) > relational distance (uchi-soto, ura-omote) is produced by the participants in their behavior and language. 158 example of a shift from soto to uchi of the obasan turning from guest to host in order to receive more ‘remote’ guests. 225 not the individual but the relationships between individuals is the basic unit of Japanese social organization. In the same sense, the relationship between self and social order constitutes the organization of social life, defined by the dynamic of uchi/soto, along with the other paired terms. 226 Contradictions and conflicts not between uchi and soto, or ura and omote, but the process of indexing itself [if not worked out properly] has the greatest potential for conflicts. 240 Culturally it is crucial to index the degree to which we share cultural knowledge with others, along the dimensions of familiar versus unfamiliar, and the degree of sharedness or we-ness – this kind of indexing is extremely basic to uchi/soto and to Japanese social life. 242 uchi/soto as pluralistic and dynamic perspective. 255 uchi/soto indexing in language suggests that structure in language is partly a product of the lived world of human beings (Wittgenstein: language as a form of life). 284 Linguistic structures of person differ from language to langauge (..) words are ordered and categorized according to their distance (spatial, temporal, social, biological, metaphorical) from the speaker. 286 The indexing in one’s acts constitutes who one is: a self emerges as it is indexed in social activity. Berg, B. van den, The Situated Self: Identity in a world of Ambient Intelligence, 2009 Through history one can find techno-optimistic and techno-pessimistic stories. Hollywood, e.g. has produced an abundance of techno-pessimistic stories, (..) including The Matrix (1999), Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (2001), Minority Report (..) (2002), I Robot (2004), and Wall-E (2008), to name but a few examples from the (..) last decade. (..) proclaiming the fear that eventually the technology gets ‘out of control’ (..) 1.2 Research question (..) The central research question of this dissertation is this: (..) Does Ambient Intelligence affect human identity, (..) and if so, in what way(s)? (..) My perspective on identity can be (..) labeled as interactionist and builds on the work of Erving Goffman. (..) 1.3 Ambient Intelligence: Envisioning the technological world of tomorrow (..) Human beings, it is argued, are placed at the heart of (..) technological design in the Ambient Intelligence vision and taken as the center to (..) which technologies should adapt. (..) To realize this user-friendly world of so-called (..) ‘ubiquitous computing’ Ambient Intelligence technologies have five specific (..) characteristics. First of all, they are embedded – they are hidden from view in walls, (..) floors, pieces of furniture, and items of clothing, in our homes, our workspaces and in (..) our public domain. Second, networks of technologies will recognize the users that are (..) present in any given environment and will respond to their specific context-related (..) needs and wants – they will be context-aware. Third, the services and information (..) provided by technologies will be personalized: they will be adjusted to a person’s (..) specific wishes, desires, and preferences. These preferences will be stored in ‘user (..) profiles’ that can be interpreted by the technology to provide users with exactly the (..) kinds of information they may want. Fourth, the technologies will be adaptive – they (..) will be able to learn from users’ past choices, preferences and responses and adjust (..) their own behaviors in light of these experiences. And last but not least, they will be (..) anticipatory: they will be able to "anticipate your desires without conscious (..) mediation" (Aarts and Marzano, 2003: 14). (..) clarify what the term ‘technology’ means (..) First, technology refers to manufactured articles – things made by humans (..) Second, ‘technology’ is sometimes used to designate (..) what Kline calls (..) ‘sociotechnical systems of manufacture’, that is (..) the entire system that is involved (..) in the creation of e.g. refrigerators. (..) A third, and often more implicit use of the term ‘technology’ refers to what Kline (..) calls the ‘sociotechnical system of use’. (..) Last, ‘technology’ can be used to designate all the "knowledge, technique, knowhow, (..) or methodology" (Kline, 2003: 211) we use to accomplish a task. (..) . In this dissertation I have chosen to focus predominantly on consumer (..) electronics. (..) theoretical (..) landscape and position myself on the map thereof (..) A first distinction to be made is that between ‘techno-optimism’ and ‘techno-pessimism’ (..) – or, as I call them, between ‘technothusiasm’ and ‘technoglum’. (..) techno-pessimists often believe (..) that "once created and put in place, technology (…) takes on a life of its own and (..) becomes autonomous." (..) a third position, which we may label ‘techno-pragmatism’, forms the (..) middle ground. A techno-pragmatist stance, in my view, entails primarily that we (..) take seriously the technological developments around us, and view critically yet (..) constructively the mixture of good and bad effects they may have. (..) a wide array of different (..) technological artifacts exist, each of which has different effects in different situations (..) my aim in this dissertation is to take a techno-pragmatist stance (..) various approaches to studying (..) the social effects of technologies (..) three different approaches may be distinguished: ‘instrumentalism’, ‘determinism’ (..) and ‘constructionism’ (..) Instrumentalists claim that technology in itself is neither good nor bad, it’s what (..) we do with the technology that makes it good or bad (or a mixture thereof). (..) Determinism (..) is the idea that technology is (..) a force in its own right, beyond the control and grasp of human beings (..) technological determinists may be either (..) optimists or pessimists (..) Constructionism (..) e.g. (SCOT), the Social Shaping of Technology (SST) and Actor Network Theory (ANT) (..) Technologies and the processes of technological development are (..) contingent to a large degree (..) technological artifacts alter the social practices into which they are (..) introduced (..) technological (..) artifacts ‘steer’ or influence human beings with regard to their use. (..) Don Ihde calls this (..) ‘technological intentionality’. (..) technological artifacts in their form and shape always contain a pull in the direction (..) of this kind of use rather than that. (..) determinism simplifies the complex processes of ‘mutual shaping’ (..) technological (..) systems and artifacts also leave a certain amount of room for the ascription of (..) meaning, and some freedom regarding their use. (..) Wiebe Bijker has called this (..) ‘interpretative flexibility’ (..) Bijker calls the (..) gradual vanishing of interpretative flexibility ‘stabilization’ (..) SCOT (..) attaches too much value to the social (..) factors that play a role in technological developments, and too little on the (..) technological factors. (..) Thus, it makes technological developments seem too (..) voluntaristic. (..) relationship between society and (..) technology (..) the trap of either technological determinism, (..) or its complete opposite, social determinism (..) What we need to do is to go back and forth constantly (..) between the role of technological artifacts and those of human beings in technological (..) developments. To me, while bearing in mind the necessity of avoiding the pitfall of (..) social determinism, the constructionist stance is still the most fruitful one. (..) social, for ANT , is (..) the name of a type of momentary association, which is characterized by the way it gathers together (..) into new shapes." (Latour, 2005: 64-65, emphasis in the original) These ‘momentary associations’, to (..) be clear, are ‘networks’ in ANT’s terminology. (..) include a broad range of factors that are (..) relevant in the mutual shaping of the intricately and indispensably interwoven (..) spheres of ‘society’ and ‘technology’ (..) constructionism’s emphasis on contextuality (..) in the domain of techno-pragmatism (..) 1.4 Identity (..) In premodern times identity was viewed as a (..) ‘given’, but like everything else modernity turned identity into a ‘life project’ (..) (Bauman, 2001: 142). (..) And the key concept in this development, according to (..) Bauman, was the notion of individualization (..) Modernity replaces the determination of social standing with a (..) compulsive and obligatory self-determination. (Bauman, 2001: 144-145 (..) far, in the sense that it has come to replace interest in domains like the community (..) and politics. (..) I disagree with this latter conclusion. (..) try and underpin and understand the broadly felt and recognizable (..) identity quest of our times. (..) nation states, institutions, cultures, social groups and individuals the world over. All (..) of these consequently feel a need to (re)consider their identities, to redefine their (..) senses of self (..) New technologies entering societies change those societies and their workings. (..) from the advent of writing to the introduction of print and on to our own days of (..) digital technologies. (..) users integrate technological artifacts into their lives in ways that were (..) unforeseen by the designers and producers of these products (..) the rise of networked technologies has contributed (..) greatly to enhancing facilities for people to connect with others beyond the (..) boundaries of their physical world (..) thus profoundly altering their ways of connecting (..) to and communicating with others. (..) technology developers and governments (..) This dissertation takes an interactionist stance towards identity. (..) George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) was the founder of what later came to be known as (..) symbolic interactionism, (..) identities are (..) constructed and expressed in and through interactions between people. (..) Robert Ezra Park (..) says: "In the end, our conception of our role becomes second nature and an (..) integral part of our personality. We come into the world as individuals, achieve (..) character, and become persons." (..) Identities are constructed in social (..) interactions, and hence are dynamic and open-ended. (..) constructivism focuses on internal, cognitive processes, (..) while constructionism focuses on discourse and social interaction (McNamee, 2004). When labeling (..) my own work in terms of this division, it is obvious from my interactionist take on identity and my (..) focus on discourse that I align myself with the constructionists rather than the constructivists. (..) Identities, thus, are multidimensional, multifaceted, (..) variable, and changeable. (..) At the same time, though, there are social constraints both (..) on the performance of roles and the construction of selves. (..) Identities, then, are the result of interactions with other people, which at the (..) same time form their constructive source and their constraint. (..) rather an evolving network (..) of various relational roles. (..) identities are not a given, but "a dynamic, (..) emergent aspect of collective action." (Schlesinger, quoted in Morley and Robins, (..) 1995: 46 (..) Erving Goffman’s interactionism is the (..) most important guide to my discussion of Ambient Intelligence’s possible effects on (..) identity. (..) For Goffman the most (..) interesting domain of sociological research was that of face-to-face interaction (..) does Ambient Intelligence affect human identity (..) using the verb ‘to affect’ (..) could give the impression of my (..) suggesting that there is a one-way direction and a fully determining ‘impact’ that (..) technologies have on users’ lives. (..) I want to make it clear that none of these things are in fact intended here. (..) taking a mutual shaping perspective is the most fruitful (..) approach in my eyes (..) Ambient Intelligence doesn’t exist yet. (..) it is still in its visionary stage (..) , this research contributes to (..) the actual development of this vision (..) 1.6 Main argument (..) Ambient Intelligence (..) focuses on the market of consumer electronics, and aims to create technologies for (..) the home, the office, and the public domain – rather than, for instance, developing (..) technologies for the workplace only. (..) it proposes to contribute to remedying a number of (..) socio-economic and political issues that are relevant for the European context. (..) concerns regarding citizens’ privacy and (..) security (..) Identity – the ‘situated self’ (..) The key argument is that identities are closely bound to the situations we find (..) ourselves in (..) Goffman’s ideas on ‘staging’ identities (the socalled (..) ‘dramaturgical perspective’) will be my starting-point (..) show how identities, (..) understood as the internalization of performed, situated roles, may be changed in (..) light of technological developments (..) impact on the situated ‘scripts’ that people use to (..) come to a ‘definition of the situation’ – an idea of ‘what is going on there’. (..) Scripts come in many (..) different forms and guises, including social and symbolic scripts, physical and (..) architectural ones, legal scripts, informational ones and so on and so forth. (..) the definition of (..) what is going on in specific situations may become expanded in scope in some (..) situations, but also diminished in others. (..) One of the key ideas of the interactionist (..) perspective on identity construction is the notion of ‘reference groups’ (or, as George (..) Herbert Mead calls them the ‘generalized other’ (Mead, 1925 (..) Ambient Intelligence technologies (..) will have a number of characteristics that enable them to mimic human (..) social behaviors (..) Ambient Intelligence technologies may (..) come to function as reference groups comparable to the human ones (..) This is why in Chapter 5 I propose to replace the notion of (..) ‘reference groups’ with that of ‘reference assemblages’. (..) As Adam Greenfield says: (..) The stakes, this time, are unusually high. A mobile phone is something that can (..) be switched off or left at home. A computer is something that can be shut down, (..) unplugged, walked away from. But the technology we’re discussing here – (..) ambient, ubiquitous, capable of insinuating itself into all the apertures everyday (..) life affords it – will form our environment in a way neither of those technologies (..) can. (..) 2 Ambient Intelligence (..) Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is the vision that technology will become invisible, (..) embedded in our natural surroundings, present whenever we need it, enabled by (..) simple and effortless interactions, attuned to all our senses, adaptive to users and (..) context and autonomously acting. High quality information and content must be (..) available to any user, anywhere, at any time, and on any device. (Lindwer, et al., (..) 2003: 1) (..) the idea that separate technological (..) devices will be integrated into large, interoperable networks (..) integrating separate sensory perceptions into an immersive experience (..) the range of (..) human-communication options will be increased. Voice commands will become more (..) prevalent, as will communication through bodily motion and tactile information. At (..) the same time the technology’s abilities to ‘respond’ to users will broaden, thereby (..) promoting forms of communication that mimic human-human communication to a (..) larger degree. (..) proposes that we (..) have a so-called ‘access key’ (Aarts and Marzano, 2003: 145) that we can use to (..) connect to the Ambient Intelligence network present in any space (..) to access situationally and (..) personally relevant information anywhere. (..) elaborate ‘user profiles’ will be built and stored on the access key (..) embedded (..) two paradoxes (..) ‘technologizing’ possibly every conceivable object (..) Second (..) paradox (..) a usertechnology (..) interaction that is as natural as possible, while at the same time it strives (..) to hide the technology from view as much as possible. (..) context-aware (..) personalized (..) in the technological world of the near future (..) our travels through and actions in different settings will be accompanied by (..) personalized manifestations of communication, information and entertainment, (..) which are expressed in the environments we find ourselves in. (..) adaptive (..) technologies should be adaptive: they (..) should be able to learn from the interaction with their users and change their (..) behavior in light of the user’s past expressed preferences. (..) One of the crucial questions that (..) arises in relation to making Ambient Intelligence a success in practice is whether (or (..) to what extent) people are going to accept this fact – of being watched and monitored (..) always and everywhere, particularly knowing that all the information gathered thus is (..) stored into profiles and used to make predictions for future behaviors as well. (..) anticipative (..) systems will be given a large (..) responsibility in managing and maintaining a user’s information sphere. (..) Technological and social prerequisites (..) the internet (..) miniaturization of computing technologies (..) enhancement of their computing power (..) sensor technology and (..) RFID tags (..) Radio Frequency IDentification (..) use radio waves to automatically identify people (..) or objects (..) contribute to the emergence of a new economy: the ‘now-economy’ (..) various types of extra information about the product may be stored on the tag (..) ‘converging technologies’, the (..) convergence of such formerly disparate fields as nanotechnology, cognitive science, (..) Artificial Intelligence and biotechnology. (..) development of different types of interfaces, supplementing the (..) existing ‘button paradigm’ (..) with ‘haptic interfaces’ or ‘tangible media’. (..) Socio-economic trends (..) large shift in the demographics (..) maintenance of the social support system and the rising costs of (..) healthcare (..) transformation ‘from mass society to a networked society’ (..) ‘mosaic’ lives, made up of a kaleidoscope of simultaneous or (..) sequential relationships, careers or lifestyles (..) participate in different groups, locally, (..) globally, physically and virtually (..) The emerging fluid networks mean that the (..) personal and the social is in a constant state of becoming. (..) civil security (..) sustainable (..) economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion (..) knowledge-based economy and society (..) reality of lifelong learning for all (..) fair and equal (..) opportunities for all (..) Pine and Gilmore (..) argue that (..) experiences are a fourth economic offering, as distinct from services as services (..) are from goods (..) multiple stories exist concerning the birth of the notion of Ambient Intelligence (..) Aarts and Encarnação (..) claim (..) that this concept "was developed in 1998 in a series of internal workshops that were (..) commissioned by the board of management of the Philips company. (..) Following its birth in these internal workshops, it was first (..) presented to the outside world at the ‘Digital Living Room Conference’, held on June (..) 21, 1999 in Dana Point, California (USA) by Roel Pieper [ OBW see the next link ] (..) The first publication on Ambient Intelligence entitled Ambient (..) Intelligence: Thuisomgevingen van de toekomst (‘Ambient Intelligence: Home (..) environments of the future’) (Aarts and Appelo, 1999) appeared in the same year in (..) IT Monitor, a Dutch popular science magazine (..) Philips Pavilion at the 1958 World Fair, held in Brussels, Belgium (..) a building called ‘La Poème Electronique’26 (..) (‘The Electronic Poem’) (..) The roots of Ambient Intelligence can be traced back to an older perspective, (..) called ubiquitous computing. (..) Mark Weiser (..) design paradigm in which the focus should be on human-computer (..) interactions that were easy, fun, ‘natural’, and ‘unobtrusive’. (..) ‘user-centric’ perspective on technology (..) AmI is a user-centric paradigm (..) create technologies that (..) move into the background of our experience. (..) Weiser called this type of technology ‘calm technology’ (Weiser and Brown, 1996: 1). (..) "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave (..) themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it." (..) (Weiser, 1991: 66) (..) web of technological developments and fields that form the background (..) Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) | Human-Centric Computing (HCC) (..) The technologies are not viewed as ‘mere’ tools to get things done, but as participants (..) in socially rich communications. (..) ‘user-centered design’ (..) ‘user-oriented design’ (..) ‘affective computing’ (Picard, 1997) (..) machines should be able to detect human emotion (..) and be able to respond emotionally (to some degree) as well (..) Ambient Intelligence fits into a network of other (..) theories and perspectives. (..) Smart homes and domotics (..) Wearable computing (..) such as mobile (..) phones or mp3 players weaven into the clothing. (..) healthcare related applications (..) some marked differences between Ambient Intelligence and the other (..) perspectives (..): typically ‘European’ (..) its focus on creating technologies for the consumer market (..) and into people’s homes. (..) technology into the home environment and (..) into the public domain as well (..) audiovisual and other communications industries as key instruments in the (..) creation of a sense of European cultural identity (..) as an antidote to the "perceived threat of ‘cocacolanisation’" (Morley and (..) Robins, 1995: 44). (..) "the maintenance of languages, cultures and life styles in (..) an enlarged Europe" and an "increasing demand for personal mobility" (..) Real-world experiences enhanced (..) rather than, for instance, transporting users to (..) different (non-existing) worlds, such as is the case in virtual reality (or VR) (..) virtual reality is only a map, (..) not a territory. (..) emphasis on creating (more) complete (i.e. (..) multi-perceptual) and life-like experiences (..). The new everyday (Aarts and (..) Marzano, 2003) and Ambient lifestyle (Aarts and Diederiks, 2006) (..) In 2002 Philips opened the first test lab (..) HomeLab’ (..) After a few years Philips decided to complement the HomeLab with two other (..) experiential laboratories: ‘CareLab’ , and ‘ShopLab’ (..) ‘New (..) Nomads’ was Philips’ first program for wearable computing (..) ‘Photonic textiles’ (..) Living Memory and Pl@net (..) formation and maintenance of (..) communities, both online and offline, in a neighborhood (..). There is always a gap between what is envisioned and what is (eventually) realized. (..). Networked applications (think of YouTube and Flickr), and the (..) booming growth of internet communities such as Hyves, LinkedIn, Facebook and (..) Friendster all have no place, nor have they been foreseen in the Ambient Intelligence (..) vision (..). critical analysis of some of the (..) (hidden) assumptions of the Ambient Intelligence paradigm (..) paradox (..) on the one hand the Ambient (..) Intelligence vision puts human beings center stage (..) on the other hand, they might just be only that: the main ingredients, losing a certain (..) amount of control and autonomy to technological systems (..) in the Ambient Intelligence vision human beings are presented as (..) highly individualistic, even atomistic units, spending the biggest part of their (..) everyday lives by themselves (..) The social dimension, we have seen (..) above, is lacking to a serious degree in the Ambient Intelligence paradigm (..) ‘Personalization’, as we will see time and again throughout this dissertation, is one of (..) the most problematic concepts in the Ambient Intelligence vision, precisely because it (..) overlooks the social character of much of our existence. (..) more (..) often than not what an individual’s preferences are is not quite clear, not to the (..) person himself, let alone to some technology that has to deduce it. (..) societal trends that cannot easily be mended by the spread of Ambient (..) Intelligence systems, for example the increase in cultural variety and economic (..) inequality that has resulted from the inclusion of ever more new member states into (..) the European Union – or the political and societal debates surrounding the (..) incorporation of (non-Western) foreigners into many of the European member states, (..) which range from assimilation to cultural integration to multiculturalism – or the rise (..) of various forms of religious fundamentalism both in Europe and outside of it – or of (..) globalization and the new division of power in the world, to name but a random few. (..) serious technological bottlenecks (..) energy resources (..) questions of battery power and energy (..) consumption are highly relevant (..) Greenfield uses the term ‘everyware’ instead of Ambient Intelligence or ubiquitous computing, but (..) the term designates roughly the same thing. (..) A second technological bottleneck is the immense variety of technological (..) standards and languages (..) need for standardization as a key requirement for (..) making Ambient Intelligence a success (..) (‘avoiding consumer lock-ins’) refers to yet another, but (..) related issue: that of interoperability. (..) One of the most fundamental concerns for a world of Ambient Intelligence is the (..) notion of profiling (..) , building user profiles in which a (..) person’s preferences are recorded and stored (..) it is vital that users be aware of the fact that (..) technologies are tracking them and storing data about them, lest they keep a sense of (..) control over these technologies and accept them as part of their everyday life (..) invisibility and visibility will have to be balanced very carefully (..) there will constantly be a tension between the two because of the requirements of (..) profiling (..) tension between hiding things (devices, information, (..) profiles) from view to optimize a user’s comfort and peace of mind on the one hand, (..) and making explicit the workings, the ‘memories’ and the deductions of technologies (..) on the other. (..) Privacy and security are indeed two of the most debated issues in relation to the (..) Ambient Intelligence vision. (..) What information is being stored about users (..) and where? Who gathers this information and who stores it? Who has access to the (..) information and for what purposes? (..) the issue of control: who is the (..) ‘owner’ of all the data collected by technological systems, and who can influence (..) them? (..) there are no ‘off’-buttons in a world of Ambient (..) Intelligence. (..) Greenfield, 2006 (..) concludes that the notion of ‘using’ computer technologies is altered (..) drastically in the technologized world of the near future – one could even argue that (..) the notion of a ‘user’ disappears entirely. (..) more appropriate to (..) say that it is the technology who ‘uses the user’ in a world of Ambient Intelligence (..) Nothing in the vision of Ambient Intelligence excludes the rise of ‘cyborg (..) technology’ (..) Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading in (..) the UK. Warwick had two chips implanted in his arm in 1998 and 2002 as part of his (..) research in cybernetics (..) with the technological possibilities increasing it seems only a matter of time before (..) various kinds of implant technology will become available. (..) Equal access, equal skills (..) emergence of a ‘new digital divide’ (or new digital divides) (..) Merleau-Ponty (..) The blind man has thus (..) ‘incorporated’ the stick into his perceptual schema. (..) certain consequences in terms of (..) the skills and capabilities it requires from users. (..) how much expertise will individual users need in (..) the near future to maintain even the simplest home networks of technology in a (..) secure and safe manner? (..) Techno-colonization (..) transformation from ‘technology-push’ to ‘user-pull’ (..) always include at least some level of technology-push, in the (..) sense that users need to be exposed to technological possibilities and probably even (..) prototypes to start up the ‘design cycle’ (..) I argue a little (..) ‘pushing’ is not only inevitable but even required (..) a constant and deliberate (..) discussion of the limits of technology push, or, for that matter, ‘user pull’ – how far (..) do we want to go in technologizing our world? (..) we no longer ‘consume’ the technology but live side by side with it (..) Through this more intimate co-existence our (..) identity becomes less about needs, ‘what do I want’, and more about expression (..) and experience, (..) (Green, in: Aarts and Diederiks, 2006: 23) (..) 3 The situated self (..) First, ‘identity’ stems from the (..) Latin word ‘identitas’, which means ‘sameness’ (..) Second, identity means identification – being able to ascertain who (or what) (..) someone (or something) is. (..) identities are always relational (..) Goffman writes that only "against something […] the self can emerge". [ ‘sameness’ only possible as ‘difference’ ] (..) Third (..) , it must always be established." (Jenkins, 2004: 4 (..) Identity is a (..) process (..) an emergent by-product of persons in relation (..) (McNamee, 1996: 149) (..) Last, identity is something that we experience as individual persons. (..) it is a multi-faceted, (..) multi-dimensional and complex notion. (..) my own (..) perspective on identity (..) focuses to a large degree on the social dimensions of (..) identity – on how identities are expressed and constructed through social relations (..) and in interactions with other people and environments. (..) Human (..) being is essentially simply self-interpreting. (Dreyfus, 1991: 23 (..) The position one (..) takes in this continuum has to be legitimized through its relevance with regard to the (..) subject it applies to – this is a basic law of science, I would say. (..) Similarly, in social (..) sciences and philosophy the road taken to look into a specific question has to fit the (..) problem at hand. (..) Since Ambient Intelligence belongs in the realm of the social, (..) studying it on the basis of a socially oriented theory of identity seems the most valid (..) choice. (..) My starting-point is that who we are, what sides (..) of ourselves we show to others, varies from situation to situation. Two hypotheses (..) form the basis for my perspective of identity: (1) who we are is closely related to (..) where we are, i.e. the situation we find ourselves in, and (2) who we are is closely (..) related to who else is present there. (..) I propose to speak of ‘situations’, which (..) I take to be a combination of a specific place with a specific moment in time, instead (..) of ‘places’. (..) self-perceptions and self-expressions are (..) intimately bound up to interactions with other people. (..) Self and place (..) Three dimensions of implacement (..) First, there is an ontological dimension. Our implaced perspective of the (..) world refers to a "way of being in the world" (Cresswell, 2004: 20). It is closely (..) related to our bodily orientation in the world. (..) Because of our embodied way of being in the world ‘implacement’ also means "a (..) way of seeing, knowing and understanding the world." (Cresswell, 2004: 11). (..) The second dimension of ‘implacement’ is psychological and refers to our (..) everyday concrete interactions with the world we live in. (..) a combination of three elements: a (..) particular ‘location’ (a geographical ‘somewhere’), a ‘locale’ (the material setting of a (..) location), and a ‘sense of place’ (the meanings people ascribe to that particular (..) location) (Cresswell, 2004: 7). (..) The third dimension of ‘implacement’ is an anthropological one. Implacement (..) is of crucial importance in the way we understand ourselves as humans, and more (..) particularly, in the construction and experience of identities. (..) Implacement and in-timement (..) temporal dimension. This dimension is (..) overlooked in most place-research. (..) human experience is always ‘in-timed’: at all times it plays itself out (..) against a background of the passage of time, and within a series of moments. (..) The concept of ‘situations’ brings together both (..) the elements of place and time: situations unfold at a specific moment in time and in (..) a specific place. But they do more than just bring a slice of time and space together: (..) situations constitute ‘action spaces’: a specific action pattern or interaction pattern (..) may take place within this place-moment context, either between people, or between (..) people and the setting itself (or a combination of both). (..) The notion of ‘situations’ incorporates three elements, then: place, (..) moment, and action space. (..) Situations are concrete everyday interactional settings. (..) They can be defined as ensembles of specific meaningful locales (places), and specific (..) moments in time in which agents may come together within an (inter)action space (..) to create a single ‘slice of social reality’. (..) variation of identities across different situations (..) more accurate to (..) speak of identities than of identity (..) "who we are is always singular and plural" (Jenkins, 2004: 5) (..) It (..) is the plurality of our identities that will be emphasized in this dissertation. (..) Symbolic interactionism’s point of departure is the idea that in the study of (..) human socialization and personality the emphasis should be on human behavior, (..) instead of introspection. (..) Symbolic interactionism, then, is a perspective that aims to study (..) human behavior as it emerges within social contexts and in social interactions (..) between human beings. (..) I will use the (..) words ‘self’ (‘selves’) and ‘identity’ (‘identities’) interchangeably (..) Thus, we develop different ‘identities’ - different role patterns that we adhere (..) to. Some of these are internalized in such a way that we become very committed to (..) them (Stryker, 1980: 61) (..) Other roles, with which we identify less, are (..) more fluid. (..) According to Mead the development of the self is (..) closely bound up with the acquisition of language and other symbolic configurations (..) used in human interaction. (..) is the result of this process of socialization. (..) Mead divided the development of the self into three different stages. (..) The first (..) stage is the ‘preparatory stage’. This stage starts at birth and lasts roughly until the (..) time children first start using language. Charon calls it the ‘presymbolic stage of self’ (..) (Charon, 1989: 67). (..) The next phase is the ‘play stage’. In this stage children start assuming the roles (..) of individual others in their play (..) As they grow older, children reach the third stage, the ‘game stage’. They learn (..) how to participate in games. When playing a game, the participants in the game have (..) to be aware of their own role, but also of those of all the others partaking in it. (..) The organized community or social group which gives to the individual his (..) unity of self [...]. The attitude of the generalized other (..) Tamotsu Shibutani (..) added another stage to the development of the child: the ‘reference group stage’ (..) (Charon, 1989: 69-70). (..) Erving Goffman: ‘Staged’ identity (..) Erving Goffman (1922-1982) (..) Strategy and strategic (..) interaction are therefore, as we will see below, central aspects of Goffman’s (..) description of social interaction. (..) respect everyone’s part and everyone’s face (..) the ‘dramaturgy metaphor’ (..) or the (..) ‘dramaturgical perspective’ (..) Goffman did a lot of research on the ways (..) identities are shaped and affected by institutions (..) ‘total institutions’, such as the army, but also mental institutions and prisons. (..) In Asylums, Goffman’s view that selves are never completely defined by social (..) situations (..) various strategies taken by individuals in (..) response to the mortification of self endured in total institutions. (..) social life in terms of a division between three concepts: ‘drama’, ‘ritual’, and ‘game’. (..) Rituals serve to protect all of the participants in an interaction from losing face, (..) from displaying sides of themselves or behaviors that they would rather keep invisible (..) to others. (..) opposing tendency, which is that of playing games. Participants may play ‘character (..) contests’ in an interaction (..) ‘expression games’ (..) ‘strategic interaction’: the participants try to maneuver through the interaction in (..) such a way that the outcome is most favorable to themselves (..) uncover the ways in which people ascribe meaning to the situations, the (..) ‘scenes’ they enter and what they perceive as ‘reality’ within these situations. (..) Goffman introduces the notion of ‘frames’ (..) I assume that definitions of a situation are built up in accordance with principles (..) of organization which govern events – at least social ones – and our subjective (..) involvement in them; frame is the word I use to refer to such of these basic (..) elements… (Goffman, 1986: 10-11) (..) The frame, then, is (..) constitutive of the roles we may assume within a situation. It is the framework within (..) which the action unfolds. (..) the self is a product of (..) performance in social interaction (..) The self is not a (..) solid structure but a movable perspective, a process that evolves with the (..) presentation and credibility of various performances." (Fontana, 1980: 67) (..) With his emphasis on role-playing Goffman’s work has become part of a larger (..) school called ‘role theory’ (..) According to Goffman, ‘cynical’ performances are definitely possible. A person (..) may feel he is playing a role that he himself doesn’t really believe in or finds (..) unconvincing. However, most of the time most people do believe in the performances (..) they act out. (..) consistency emerges not just in an (..) attempt by the individual to create a coherent self-image of and for himself, but also (..) in relation to the audience: performers in an interaction are expected to perform in a (..) way that is in line with previous performances (..) his drama metaphor (..) should not be taken too literally, at the same time he does not show where the limits (..) of his metaphor lie. (..) passages suggest that although the dramaturgy perspective may have (..) been initially introduced as a metaphor we need to take it literally as well. (..) elements that are of (..) importance in every performance. First of all, there is what he calls the ‘front’ (..) (Goffman, 1959: 22). (..) A second element, says Goffman, is the ‘setting’ (Goffman, 1959: 22) (..) A last aspect of every performance is what Goffman calls the ‘personal front’. (..) This is a person’s own ‘expressive equipment’ (..) performances are often conducted together with other people (..) Goffman calls such a (..) group of performers a ‘team’ (..) human identities as a multiplicity of selves: we are quite (..) literally a ‘one-man team’ since our identities consist of various selves (a team) brought together in one (..) agent. (..) Goffman expresses the situatedness of social interactions by arguing that there (..) are different ‘regions’ in which such interactions may take place. (..) Goffman distinguishes between three different regions: ‘front regions’, also (..) called ‘front stage’; ‘back regions’, or ‘backstage’; and ‘the outside’. (..) Basically, Goffman’s distinction between front stage and backstage can be (..) rephrased in terms of the distinction between ‘public behaviors’ and ‘private (..) behaviors’. (..) the ‘director’s (..) problem’, as I’d like to summarize the quest for finding a ‘true’ self behind the roles in (..) his work (..) Andrea Fontana (..) argues that there is a ‘naked self’ behind all the (..) performances, behind the so-called ‘social selves’ (Fontana, 1980: 68-71) (..) we should include this oscillation between (..) identification and distance as a central element in the construction of identity. (..) the self can never be fully identified with institutions, nor be completely (..) separated from them. Fontana’s argument falls through, then. (..) The ‘self-as-performer’ is the ‘psychobiological self’, consisting of drives, (..) energies, and impulses, but mainly "the motivational core which motivates us to (..) engage in the performances with which we achieve selfhood" (..) The ‘self-as-character’ (..) "represents a person’s unique humanity. It is the socialized self or the character (..) performed […], which is equated with self in our society." (..) Goffman’s definition of these two terms has always seemed counter-intuitive to me. (..) biological persona with the socialized self (..) Solving the director’s dilemma, part 1: Role distance (..) Goffman argues that we should (..) investigate the issue of roles and role-playing from the perspective (..) of the ‘situated activity system’. (..) role distance (..) the individual (..) acts in the name of (..) some other socially created identity." (Goffman, 1961b: 120 (..) For (..) Goffman the individual has a ‘multiplicity of selves’ that are all socially constructed, (..) expressed and maintained. (..) there is in fact no director (..) behind the roles, but merely a network of roles (..) Using the notion of role distance may be one way of solving the director’s dilemma. (..) But there is another way to solve this riddle: using George Herbert Mead’s (..) interpretation of the distinction between ‘I’ and ‘me’ (..) take a third-person perspective towards themselves (..) the (..) self has two sides: the ‘self as subject’ and ‘self as object’. (..) Symbolic interactionists generally refer to the ‘self as object’ as the ‘me’, whereas (..) the ‘self as subject’ is labeled ‘I’ (..) self-reflection (..) we may experience a (..) ‘director’ that is present behind every performance (‘I’), that holds all the (..) performances together and unifies all the roles, but once we turn our minds to this (..) director to investigate this ‘real self behind the role’, this ‘manipulator’, this ‘naked (..) self’ more closely, we lose sight of him and end up with a third-person perspective (..) instead (‘me’). (..) I argue that the interactionist framework needs to be broadened to (..) include our dealings with such artifacts and environments. (..) a ‘reference assemblage’ (..) A situated self, (..) then, awaits the individual." (Goffman, 1961b: 96-97 (..) 4 Situation, script, frame (..) ‘definition of the situation’, a concept that was coined by William Isaac Thomas (..) (Thomas, 1969: 42 (..) I propose to use the notion of scripts to (..) explain what ‘situational cues’ people use to determine what is going on in each (..) situation, and to motivate their role choices (..) situations, argued Thomas, (..) contain both ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ elements (..) such a distinction cannot be uncritically (..) maintained, because the ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ are in fact both social constructs and/or factually (..) interwoven and only analytically distinguishable concepts (cf. Latour, 1993). (..) ‘Thomas’ theorem’: "if men define situations as real, they are (..) real in their consequences." (Thomas and Thomas, 1928: 572) (..) He argues that we should not view situations as static backgrounds for action, but (..) rather as changeable and dynamic. (..) defining a situation involves (..) two factors: first, the fact that the participants in an interaction need to "agree on the (..) type of social occasion in which they are participating. (..) Second, they must agree on (..) "the identities they will grant one another and, relatedly, on the roles they will (..) enact. (..) in most ‘situations’ many different things are happening (..) simultaneously (..) how do people choose what role to (..) play in each situation? (..) I argue that each situation contains ‘scripts’ (..) language connotations (..) scenes in a play or a movie (..) computer program (..) scripts, in my use of them, do not describe in any detail or in any (..) complete form what a person should do in a given situation. (..) the configuration of objects present in that situation, which explicitly or implicitly (..) govern (courses of) action in connection with the situation. (..) distinction between scripts and rules. (..) ‘Rule-following’ and all that it may entail has (..) been one of the topics studied extensively by analytical philosophers such as Ludwig (..) Wittgenstein, Gilbert Ryle and John Searle. (..) Otto Duintjer (Duintjer, 1977) has analyzed the main (..) characteristics of ‘rule-following behaviors’ in analytical philosophy (..) ten laws regarding (..) rules (Duintjer, 1977: 26-39). (..) 1. Rule-following behavior is not the same as regular behavior (..) 2. Rule-following behavior is not necessarily accompanied by conscious (..) reflection (..) 3. Rule-following behavior can be criticized (..) 4. Rule-following behavior is learnt behavior (..) 5. Rule-following behavior is understandable to others (..) 6. Rule-following behavior is behavior that comes about as the result of the (..) expectations of the social group one belongs to. (..) Scripts are communications, or (..) expressions of rules in material forms. (..) embodiment (..) scripts are rules made (..) visible in the environment (..) Scripts are social constructs. [ OBW a subset of ‘constraints’ ] (..) scripts are not arbitrary, voluntaristic or without obligations. (..) They call forth a certain (..) level of engagement with the particular situation and create a framework within (..) which a person may choose his or her course of action, so to speak. (..) One could say that scripts and definitions structure situations, in the sense that (..) they provide guidelines for choosing a role befitting the environment a person has (..) entered. (..) Scripts leave room for interpretation, so that the same scripts may not give rise (..) to the same responses in different people (..) persons always need to (..) improvise to some extent within the given circumstances. (..) Scripts (..) could be labeled as ‘strategy-generating principles’, (..) to use a term by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1977: 72) (..) In some respects my conception of the notion of scripts (..) resembles Michel Foucault’s analysis of the role of architectural features and social (..) regulations in conditioning behaviors and ideas (..) With Foucault I emphasize (..) the political power of scripts. (..) they steer people’s behavior in certain directions and (..) support the creation of categories such as ‘appropriate’ versus ‘non-appropriate’ (..) action patterns for each particular setting. (..) Scripts, (..) therefore, can be said to be both limiting and liberating. (..) scripts are not a ‘given’, but rather (..) emerge in the interaction of a human being and his environment (..) a script (..) expresses the rule (..) scripts vary from being (..) very explicit (made visible by signs and symbols), to being left unspoken and wholly (..) implicit. (..) Broadly (..) speaking, scripts communicate the situational social regulations, legal rules, political (..) prescriptions, etc. (..) Thomas shows that changes in everyday situational definitions may have (..) profound consequences for societies at large. (..) The term ‘scripts’ has a history in relation to technological artifacts. (..) as one of the knowledge structures (..) For me, scripts are implanted in (..) technologies (..) Madeleine Akrich (..) the technical content of a new object. I will call the end product of this (..) work a ‘script’ or a ‘scenario’. (Akrich, 1992: 208) (..) …the gender script of the Ladyshave inhibits […] the ability of women to see (..) themselves as interested in technology and as technologically competent, whereas (..) the gender script of the Philishaves invites men to see themselves that way. In (..) other words: Philips not only produces shavers but also gender. (Van Oost, 2003: (..) 207) (..) users (..) "domesticate technology by assigning new meanings to an artifact" (Gjøen and (..) Hård, 2002: 278). (..) In Artificial Intelligence research the notion of scripts was put on the agenda by (..) Roger Schank and Robert Abelson in their famous book Scripts, plans, goals, and (..) understanding (..) Schank and Abelson define a (..) script as "a predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions that defines a wellknown (..) situation." (Schank and Abelson, 1977: 41) (..) structures, thereby placing them in the human mind. (..) In my own perspective (..) scripts are expressions of rules that are made visible in situations, and thus (..) they are emergent properties of situations, which are interpreted by human beings in (..) their definitions of situations. Scripts, for me, are not elements of the human (..) episteme, but rather situational components. (..) humans affect (..) the behaviors of other humans, via objects (..) technologies as (..) artifacts may act as scriptal forces themselves in situations. (..) I want to reveal not so much the scripts that (..) human beings may have implanted into artifacts, but rather treat such objects as (..) scripting forces in their own right: to see in which ways technologies shape the ‘cues’ (..) we use to come to a definition of the situation in given situations. (..) the presence of technologies alters the boundedness of situations (..) the situation we find ourselves in may change the (..) instant the phone rings or an e-mail is received. (..) , Meyrowitz argues that the rise of electronic media has (..) severed the saturation of this ‘time/space frame’ whenever they are present (..) (Meyrowitz, 1985: 124; 2005: 28) (..) disconnection of ‘physical place’ and ‘social place’ (..) In both oral and print cultures, he concludes, the connection between (..) physical place and social place was very strong. (..) [now] online education and distance learning are rapidly becoming more and more central (..) in our education system (..) information and communication technologies have come to pervade (..) almost any physical setting at any given moment (..) this has a bearing on the (..) definition of the situation: ‘what is going on’ is no longer strictly bound up with the (..) physical place one finds oneself in. (..) on the (..) phone talking to someone (..) Gergen calls this ‘absent presence’ (..) , informational presence has become the more important factor. (..) being ‘tuned-in’ (..) it is not just physical and social place that (..) become separated; we may say the same of physical place and spatial function. (..) A park may now function in the same traditional ways, as a meeting place, a place to (..) relax, a place to do exercise etc., but it may also be used as a place to work, using a (..) laptop, a mobile phone, a PDA, or all of these combined. (..) Thus, the expansion of the (..) functionality of spaces and places leads to an increase in the possible definitions of (..) the situation (..) homogenization of knowledge, in the sense that more people have access to the (..) same types and contents of information (..) Fortunati argues that electronic media, such as televisions and mobile phones, (..) have the remarkable feature of being so gripping that their messages and (..) interruptions often get prevalence over the actual face-to-face interactions taking (..) place in a given situation (..) ICTs form stronger script cues than do some other objects (..) We can see how this works in the use of mobile phones in public spaces. (..) What the (..) debates regarding mobile phone etiquette are about, to my mind, is a widely shared (..) sense of confusion about the appropriateness of (inter)action patterns, about ‘who to (..) be’ and what to do and not to do in specific situations. (..) – this is nothing new. After all, in the ‘old days’ one could enter a train compartment and decide to use (..) it as the perfect stage for displaying one’s singing talents, for example, (..) Frames as temporary brackets (..) greater variation in stable versus dynamic situational interpretations (..) use Goffman’s notion of frames alongside (..) the ‘definition of the situation’. (..) He replaces the definition of the situation with the concept of (..) frames, which he defines as "principles of organization which govern the subjective (..) meaning we assign to social events" (Branaman, 1997: lxxiv) (..) frameworks’, ‘keys’, ‘designs’ and ‘fabrications’ (Goffman, 1986) (..) I define a ‘frame’ as the temporary bracketing of an ongoing definition of the (..) situation and the adoption of a personal definition in its stead. (..) what (..) is contained in the frame becomes the main point of focus (..) In a world of Ambient Intelligence (..) the framing (..) responses of technology users will only increase. (..) the present-day generation of computers also extensively uses frames, called (..) ‘windows’, which allow users to ALT-TAB between different tasks, and hence (..) definitions. Sherry Turkle writes that the notion of working in different ‘windows’ has (..) had a serious impact on identity construction (..) windows have become a potent metaphor for thinking about the self as a (..) multiple, distributed […] system. (..) a distributed self that exists in many (..) worlds and plays many roles at the same time. (Turkle, 1996: 160) (..) individuals are (..) continuously halfway in and halfway out of a performance. Role-distance may (..) therefore become an even more common phenomenon. (..) more freedom and flexibility to choose roles in given situations (..) necessity for human beings of merging the vast amount of separate roles they play (..) into some form of a combined self. (..) 5 Intimate technologies as ‘reference group’ (..) expand the interactionist perspective (..) include the interactional role of objects and (..) environments in the construction of identities. (..) Tamotsu Shibutani, we have seen, replaced Mead’s notion of the ‘generalized (..) other’ with that of ‘reference groups’ (Shibutani, 1955; 1987). (..) [T]he concept of reference group (..) refers to an organization of the (..) actor’s experience. (..) What I’m interested in is whether objects can come to fulfill a similar (..) role as other human beings in the construction of identities. (..) our (..) way of being in the world is always relational. (..) technological artifacts (..) call forth social responses in human (..) beings. (..) I conclude that ‘intimate technologies’ in a world of Ambient (..) Intelligence may indeed come to function as ‘reference groups’ (or, as I rename them, (..) ‘reference assemblages’) in the construction of identities (..) The role of objects as (..) constitutive elements in human identities is overlooked. (..) , we should be aware of the agency of objects and environments. (..) for Latour, [BvdB] (..) any thing that [modifies] a state of affairs by making a difference is an actor (..) our embodied (..) way of being in the world is always relational, not just vis-à-vis other people, but also (..) with regard to the environments that we inhabit and move through in everyday life (..) and the objects in those environments (..) I distinguish between three different ways of relating to both (..) objects and environments: ‘non-participative’ relations, ‘participative’ relations, and (..) ‘personal relations’. (..) Each of these types of relating aligns with a different type of (..) objects and environments: ‘directional’ objects and environments, ‘engaging’ objects (..) and environments, and ‘intimate’ objects and environments respectively (..) Non-participative relations | directional objects (..) objects and (..) environments (..) that form the ‘field’ in which we position (..) our embodied selves (..) first (..) navigate (..) Second (..) locational sense (..) Third (..) territorial claims (..) Directional objects and environments (..) provide us with navigational and locational boundaries, and transversal (..) possibilities and barriers. (..) Participative relations | engaging objects (..) we use them to do things. (..) they literally (..) engage us in acting with and through them. (..) Personal relations | intimate objects (..) objects that we tend to use often, (..) wouldn’t want to part with without difficulty, or share with others easily. (..) ‘tokens of self’ – vehicles for self-presentation. (..) Televisions, telephones and radios have the extra quality of being ‘looking-glasses’ (..) and connecting gateways into other domains and other peoples’ lives. (..) intimate technologies (..) mobile phones, PDAs and laptops (..) Not all intimate technologies are information and communication technologies. (..) Personally, one of my own most intimate, (non-ICT) technologies is (..) my universal, portable battery pack. [OBW battery pack? intimate?] (..) Don Ihde has explored the specific ways in which we relate to technological (..) artifacts (..) First (..) some technological artifacts mediate our perception (..) glasses or contacts to improve our eyesight (..) Second (..) background relations – technologies, such as (..) refrigerators (..) Third (..) alterity relations – these refer to our explicit and conscious (..) involvement with technological artifacts. (..) In alterity relations, Ihde says, the technology becomes a ‘quasi-other’ (Ihde, (..) 1990: 98). (..) ascribe ‘animation’ to these technologies (..) [OBW revival of a ‘magic’ world – reverse of ‘Entzauberung’..., the New Animism] (..) human (..) beings apparently display social responses to certain technological artifacts. (..) Sherry Turkle: Anthropomorphism (..) The Second Self: Computers and the human spirit (Turkle, 1984) (..) The interactivity of computers and (..) particularly the fact that they display irregular behaviors makes them into likely (..) candidates for this kind of childhood animism (Turkle, 1984: 30). (..) Weizenbaum (..) "ELIZA shows, if nothing else, how easy it is to (..) create and maintain the illusion of understanding […] A certain danger lurks there." (..) Anthropomorphism is the conscious and thoughtful (..) tendency to ascribe human characteristics to nonhumans, such as animals and (..) objects (Duffy, 2003: 177; Fong, et al., 2003: 150). (..) Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass: The Media Equation (..) How people treat computers, television, and new media (..) like real people and places (Reeves and Nass, 1996). (..) machines to call forth a whole range of social (..) responses that would normally only be reserved for interactions with other human (..) beings, without being aware of the fact that this is happening. (..) Reeves (..) and Nass conclude that acting socially comes so naturally for human beings that it’s (..) one of the easiest ways of approaching the world for them. (..) when technologies become increasingly more ‘lifelike’ and ‘smart’ (..) see what the limits of sociality and intimacy in human-technology relations (..) really are. (..) intimate technologies (..) will (..) actively engage the cycle of self-expression and self-conception (..) they will come to function as tokens of self (..) technologies may teach us things about (..) ourselves that we didn’t know yet. (..) As technologies become increasingly more interactive and proactive, (..) we may assume that our interactions with them will start to resemble human (..) interactions to an ever-larger degree. (..) intimate technologies (..) as tokens of self, used to present a particular self-image (..) call forth social responses in human beings (..) mimic human forms of relating (..) technologies will adjust their own behavior to the social (..) preferences of each individual (..) may easily lead these users to (..) view the technology as ‘socially sensitive’, in the sense that it appears to ‘understand’ (..) their ideas on appropriateness and desirability, and to respect these preferences. (..) From Ambient Intelligence to Intelligent Ambience (..) ‘Intelligent Ambience’ more clearly explains what is envisioned here: being (..) surrounded by everyday settings that respond in (socially) smart ways. (..) From reference groups to reference assemblages (..) I argue that technological artifacts in a world of (..) Ambient Intelligence will indeed become ‘others’, rather than ‘quasi-others’, because (..) of the parallel roles they will assume. (..) Ihde formulated two criteria to distinguish actual ‘others’ from ‘quasi-others’. (..) The first criterion was having a will of one’s own (..) technological networks have been (..) developed that can learn tasks without explicit programming, mimicking neural (..) networks in the brain (..) fuzzier boundaries in defining the spiritedness of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. (..) Ihde’s second reason for distinguishing a ‘spirited horse’ from a ‘spirited car’ (..) says that a horse can survive on its own (..) review the strict division between (..) ‘others’ and ‘quasi-others’. (..) I argue, contrary to Verbeek’s claim that technological objects are "never a genuine other" (Verbeek, 2005: 127), that in a world of Ambient (..) Intelligence they may in fact just come to function as such: as genuine others in the (..) construction and expression of identities. [OBW that could mean loosing a difference that makes a difference for critical evaluation of the quality of intimate hightech for humans, on the other hand it would invoke a cloud of e.g. ethical and juridical questions related to the ‘status’ of ‘others’ of a new kind] (..) technologies (..) providing us with support and feedback through natural (..) cues (..) the idea of being seen and valued (..) Interactionist theories of identity revisited (..) both objects and environments in our interactionist conception of the creation and (..) expression of identities. (..) accommodate (..) for the network of relations between humans and their environing world as a (..) situational whole. (..) It will (..) be hard to see their formative effects in a clear and straightforward way, since the (..) functioning of reference groups generally is largely unconscious. (..) 6 Bubblicious? Bubblelonely? Bubbleverywhere! (..) constantly supplement their technological realization with a constructive, (..) critically evaluative, probing voice. (..) It’s my belief that social scientists and philosophers can contribute to the (..) optimization of the design and development of new technological paradigms (..) concerns regarding the creation of extensive user (..) profiles (‘profiling’), regarding the amount of control and influence that users have (..) and/or experience over Ambient Intelligence systems, and regarding privacy and (..) security. (..) My perspective of the situated (..) self (..) allows for changes in a person’s self-conception and (..) expression over time. (..) people use situational scripts in order to come to an understanding (..) of ‘what is going on’ in the situation they have entered. (..) I have introduced Goffman’s concept of (..) frames to delineate the situational ‘interruptions’ caused by various kinds of modern (..) technologies from the definition of the situation prevailing in a social context. (..) technologies (..) to more frequent framing, (..) more temporary bracketing of the definition of the situation (..) role-playing in situations will become more dynamic and (..) variable. (..) More dynamic role-playing, one could say, means more dynamic, (..) more fluid self-expression, and ultimately a more dynamic, more fluid selfconception. (..) perhaps that each of a person’s many selves as (..) such are less pronounced, less well-developed, and more fluid. (..) reference assemblage (..) ‘generalized other’ (Mead, 1925 (..) ‘reference groups’ (..) (Shibutani, 1955; (..) grey area between ‘life’ and ‘non-life’ in which (..) intimate technologies might very well find their place. Ambient Intelligence (..) technologies, with their combination of personalization, pro-activity, contextsensitivity, (..) and adaptivity, will, more likely than not, display levels of ingenuity and (..) (social) refinery that will truly and rightfully earn them the predicate ‘agents’. (..) likely to come to (..) function as ‘reference assemblages’ in the construction and expression of identities. (..) mutual shaping perspective (..) objects and environments (..) as constitutive factors (..) as agents (..) as enablers and inhibitors (..) as prohibitors (..) the insulating shield will, in all likelihood, be very thick (..) distributed presence (..) the confrontation between the bubbles (..) of various people in the same space becomes unavoidable (..) battles of the bubbles’ (..) solved by finding a third music style that both parties like (..) room temperature (..) compromise (..) not thoroughly comfortable [OBW this could be compensated by tempature-adjusting softwear – a technical possibility that was referred to in this thesis already, but which could count also as solution for this ‘social problem’] (..) promise of a unique, (..) personalized sphere for each individual (..) is problematic (..) because the deeply social character of our everyday world is overlooked – a social (..) world that is fraught with compromises. (..) Ambient Intelligence’s (..) atomistic conception of human beings (..) and their everyday lives is therefore, to my mind, one of its greatest weaknesses (..) the notion of ‘public space’ as we (..) know it will come under strain. (..) some may find its materialization bubblicious, (..) many others may become bubblelonely indeed. (..) [OBW Why has the concept ‘intelligence’ not been explained as extensively as the other main concepts of this thesis, like situated, self, identity,...? ] constructionism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructionism_(learning_theory) Constructionist learning is inspired by the constructivist theory that individual learners construct mental models to understand the world around them. However, constructionism holds that learning can happen most effectively when people are also active in making tangible objects in the real world. In this sense, constructionism is connected with experiential learning and builds on some of the ideas of Jean Piaget. http://www.papert.org/articles/SituatingConstructionism.html http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/const_inst1.html Cowart, M., Embodied Cognition, 2006 [ link ] Embodied Cognition (..) emphasizes the formative role the environment plays in the development of cognitive processes (..) cognitive processes develop when a tightly coupled system emerges from real-time, goal-directed interactions between organisms and their environment (..) mind, body, and world mutually interact and influence one another to promote an organism’s adaptive success (..) 1. Motivation for the Movement (..) the cognitivist/classicist research program (..) explanations are inaccurate because they either underplay or completely overlook environmental factors that are essential to the formation of an accurate explanation of cognitive development. (..) embodied cognition theorists favor a relational analysis that views the organism, the action it performs, and the environment in which it performs it as inextricably linked. (..) 2. General Characteristics of Embodied Cognition (..) Once again, the central claim of embodied cognition is that an organism's sensorimotor capacities, body and environment not only play an important role in cognition, but the manner in which these elements interact enables particular cognitive capacities to develop and determines the precise nature of those capacities. (..) theoretical assumptions (..) 1) the primacy of goal-directed actions occurring in real-time; 2) the belief that the form of embodiment determines the type of cognition; and 3) the view that cognition is constructive. (..) -a- Primacy of Goal-Directed Actions Occurring In Real-Time (..) goal-directed actions are described as primary for embodied theorists because these theorists argue that thought and language would not occur without the initial performance of these actions. (..) assumption that "thought grows from action and that activity is the engine of change" (Thelen 1995: 69). (..) -i-. Developmental Psychology (..) four infants faced unique problems in learning to reach based on their individual energy level, body mass and the different ways in which they initially tried to reach (..) Thelen notes that the unique problems encountered and solved by individual infants make it extremely unlikely that the solutions were innate, since no internal mechanism could know in advance the specific "energy parameters of the system" (Thelen 1995: 90). (..) the challenge is "to understand how the system can generate its own change, through its own activity, and within its own continuing dynamics, be it the spring-like attractors of the limbs or the neural dynamics of the brain" (Thelen 1995: 91). (..) One possible objection to a dynamic systems analysis of development is that this research program is limited because it will only be able to account for low-level, goal-directed action (i.e., walking, reaching, etc.). (..) Thelen argues that the infant's ability to gain control over its body in order to perform various activities enables the infant to simultaneously learn certain categories. More specifically, the infant learns "that a certain category of force dynamics is appropriate for a certain class of tasks" (Thelen 1995: 95). (..) one might argue that the generalized categories formulated to perform these reaching behaviors could be viewed as one instance of intentional categorization emerging from action of a dynamical system. (..) -ii- Robotics/Artificial Life (..) Until recently, almost all of the robots built in the field of artificial intelligence were constructed according to the stored-description model. (..) In the early 1980's, MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks became dissatisfied with the stored-description approach (..) Therefore, Brooks decided to try to build a robot that could thrive in an environment without utilizing a central planning facility; the result was Herbert. (..) Herbert relied on what Brook’s called a "subsumption architecture," which consisted of a number of connected layers, each responsible for performing a specific task; actions emerged from the suppression or activation of various sub-systems. (..) demonstrating that a robot could quickly react in its environment without the aid of a formal plan. (..) a fast reaction time was gained by developing sub-systems/layers that generated behaviors that reacted to types of phenomena (..) (i.e., avoiding walls in general) instead of tokens (i.e., avoiding wall #3). (..) -b- Form of Embodiment Constrains Kinds of Cognitive Processes (..) the particular way in which an organism is embodied (e.g., whether it has feet, fins, eyes, a tail, etc.) will influence how it performs goal-directed actions in the world, and the particular sensorimotor experiences connected with these actions will serve as the basis for category and concept formation. (..) In general, environmental factors are very important because they can influence not only what options are available to a particular organism, but also why an organism might choose one option over another when performing a particular goal-directed activity. (..) , the way in which we are embodied determines the type of action patterns we can perform and these action patterns shape our cognitive functions (..) -c- Cognition is Constructive (..) concepts and categories are actively constructed and not merely apprehended wholesale from an observer-independent environment (..) The basic idea is that the organism actively constructs a sensorimotor representation that is based on those environmental features that are directly relevant to the goal-directed action it is currently performing. Consequently, environmental space X could be viewed differently by the same organism depending on the type of task the organism is performing in that space, primarily because the goal-directed activity determines which environmental features are relevant to the successful performance of the activity. (..) a type of mutual specification occurs between the organism and its environment, so that the way the world looks and the way in which the organism can interact in the world is primarily determined by the way the organism is embodied. (..) it should not be surprising that one way for an organism to interpret its environment is in terms of something it already knows well: its own bodily interactions. (..) The interconnected way in which these different sensorimotor modalities mutually affect one another is clearly demonstrated in the case of the colorblind painter; (..) case study, a painter (hereafter Mr. I) who completely lost his ability to see colors after a car accident finds that this loss directly affected the way he experienced other sensorimotor experiences, such as taste and sound. (..) there is no single proper or correct way of viewing the world, since being able to correctly see the world translates into using whatever sensorimotor modalities one has to act successfully in one's environment. (..) an organism’s particular view of the world is the direct result of its functioning sensorimotor experiences. (..) 3. Embodied Cognition vs. Classicism/Cognitivism
-a- The Compatibilist Approach (..) using a variety of methods to explain cognitive processes. (..) especially since it is unclear if embodied cognition accounts will be able to adequately explain higher level processes (e.g., meta-cognitive states such as the ability to think about one's own thoughts) without invoking on some level a computational or representational analysis. (..) -b- The Purist Approach (..): researchers who adopt it argue that the classicist/cognitivist thesis is incorrect. (..) there is no guarantee that the necessary tools/mechanisms will be developed to enable embodied theorists to explain these higher cognitive processes, especially those specific to human cognition. Cowx, I.G. (ed), Interactions between fish and birds : implications for management, 2003 3 W.Dekker & J.J. de Leeuw Bird-fisheries interactions: the complexity of managing a system of predators and preys. Model for the IJsselmeer lake in the Netherlands. A simplified model includes five biota [ecological groups] (man, birds, piscivorous fish, prey fish and zooplankton) and explicitely addresses the relations between biomass and production (P=b*B), its density dependence, fisheries, predation and food selection. Few of the underlying processes are addressed, disabling the assessment of the dynamics of the bird-fhisheries system. 361 I.G. Cowx, Interactions between fisheries and fish-eating birds: optimising the use of shared resources. Conflict between bird conservationalists and fisheries managers. Combination of factors: protected status of birds (EU Birds Directive EEC/79/409), loss of food resources in the preferred habitat ranges, high stocking densities of fish in inland waters and degradation of habitat with reduced cover for fishes. 365 Each fishery appears to have its own treshold set by the complex interaction between bird depredation and fish population dynamics, between consumption and production. No single management intervention (e.g. scaring, shooting), was effective at mitigating the problems created by cormorants. Many problems due to the social and huge economic importance of [mainly recreational] fisheries. 368 Many inland waters are intensively stocked, at great expense, to ensure good angling performance, thus cormorant depredation is directly impinging on this objective. Many other piscivorous birds are reliant on fish stocks in inland waters for their continued survival. 369 Bird numbers and distributions are very much dictated by the food resources available. Over-harvesting of the fish resources around the coastal waters of Europe > cormorants move inlands for more lucrative feeding opportunities. Solution: optimisation of resource allocation of the fish stocks to satisfy both groups – fishermen and bird conservationists.370 This requires harmonisation of philosophical views of rather biocentric (e.g. environmentalists) and anthropocentric (e.g. inland fishermen) oriented stakeholders, which resembles a socio-cultural and political issue. Apply the stakeholder approach to decision making, based on sound science or factual evidence. Endler, N.S. & D. Magnusson, Interactional Psychology and Personality, 1976 1 Four main models in personality psychology: trait model, psychodynamic model (roots in psychoanalysis), situationism model (roots in behaviorism) and interactionism model. 2 The trait model (and its precursor, the type model) and the psychodynamic model regard actual behavior as determined by latent, stable dispositions: B=f(P) . 3 Situationism regards situational factors, or the stimuli in the situation, as the main determinants of individual behavior: B=f(S) . Interactionism sees actual behavior as the result of an indispensable, continuous interaction between the person and the situation he encounters: B=f(P,S) . 4 For interactionism development involves a social learning process that emphasizes the interaction between person variables and meaningful situations. The focus on person variables is in terms of cognitive social learning and on the meanings that situations have for individuals. 5 Research strategies: trait theory mainly correlational research, psychodynamism primarely interested in idiographic descriptions, situationism in experimental approach, interactionism in observation, tests, questionnaires and experiments. 10 History interactionism: Kantor (1924,1926) one of the first to postulate a person-situation interaction theory of behavior. 1935 Tolman, in a behavioristic framework: B=f(S,H,T,P) (where H=heredity and T=training). 1935ff Lewin: interaction between personality and meaningful environment: B=f(P,E). 12 More recent characteristics of the interactionalist approach: 1 behavior is determined by a continuous process of inteaction between the individual and the situation he encounters (feedback), 2 the individual is an intentional, active agent in this interaction process, 3 cognitive factors are important in interaction, 4 the psychological meaning of the situation to the individual is an essential determinant of behavior. 14 Distinctions: objective and subjective (psychological) environments (type), macro and micro environments (level). 409ff Methodologies for analyzing persons by situation interactions. New methods of data collection and data treatment within an organismic model of behavior were necessary. One main problem is the relative contribution of different sources to the total behavior variance. This cannot be accomplished by comparing mean squares (MS) from different sources, because MS are not independent from one another. Other techniques are applied: variance components technique (e.g. Endler’s analysis of anxiety data, showing that person by situation interactions contribute more to variance than either person or situation per se), multivariance information analysis and transition probability analysis( e.g. Raush’s investigation of interaction sequences among normal and disturbed children in different situations) and Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), classifying individuals in homogeneous groups in terms of their reaction patterns across situations (e.g. Magnusson & Ekehammar’s analysis of anxiety in adolscents: factor analysis yielded 3 main situation factors (tentatively labeled as ‘threat of punishment’, ‘anticipation fear’ and ‘inanimate threat’) and 2 response factors (tentatively interpreted as ‘psychic anxiety’ and ‘somatic anxiety’); data showed significant differences boys-girls. And the LPA analysis ordered different groups by 1 anxiety level (high/low), 2 response consistency (high/low), 3 transsituational consistency (high/low). feedback feedback = bringing part of the system’s output back into the system as information about the [effects of the] output. Distinguish negative feedback (bringing a system back to stability or equilibrium) from positive feedback (leading to change). Interactional systems may be viewed as feedback loops. If a system stores previous adaptations for future use, the processes of that system show stochasticity, redundancy or constraint ( = repeating patterns, pattern formation ). (..) functions A function is a relation between variables ( e.g. y2 = 4ax as comprising the properties of a curve ). What exactly is the relation between the function and the graph? There is both something reductive and something productive in a function. (..) Funtions can also describe patterns of relationships. (..) Hausman, C.R., Metaphor and Art. Interactionism and Reference in the Verbal and Nonverbal Arts, 1989 Evolutionary realism (vs e.g. idealism, Kantianism, relativism): world, language and thought evolve. The interpretive dimension (constituting all thought) also points to a basis for affirming the vital role of mind-independent objectivity in some if not all interpretation. 1 I.A. Richards: tension and ‘interactions’ among the key terms of metaphors (tenor and vehicle). 2 Metaphors are both intelligible and unintelligible. 6 D. Berggren: Metaphor constitutes the indispensable principle for integrating diverse phenomena and perspectives without sacrificing their diversity. 7 Divergence and convergence [ and the consequent tension ] can be regarded as an internal order in which there is an interaction between or among components in the metaphorical expression. 13 Distinguished from metaphor: the semiotic or conceptual symbol, which is a sign that is humanly constructed and that refers to something independent of itself (S. Langer). 14 A semiotic symbol is replaceable. Semiotic symbols are fixed (lack multiplicity of meanings – Ricoeur: plurisignification). 16 Distinguish analogies (comparison of similarities, reducible to what was known antecedently). 21 Metaphors are also different from literal expressions, which can be paraphrased without loss of significance. 24 Reductionism interprets metaphors as cognitive expressions translatable into analogies, similes or ‘literal’ language. Originativists believe that some metaphors can create unique insights and that these metaphors are irreducible with respect to the antecedents in their contexts. 25 M. Beardsley: four theories for understanding metaphors: 1 Emotive Theory (metaphors are interesting due to their emotional expressiveness – vs: but metaphors have also their own special, new, cognitive significance), 2 Comparison Theory (metaphors are implied analogies or expressions that assert antecedent relations – but see 1), 3 Iconic Signification Theory (although the iconic signs are drawn from different domains, they nevertheless have similarities), 4 Verbal-Opposition Theory (distinguishes marginal meanings from central meanings, metaphors transfer marginal meanings to central meanings). 31 Interactionism. Richards: tenor and vehicle are in tension and generate meaning through internal but dynamic relations (‘interanimation of words’). 34 CH starts using Max Black’s version of interactionism. Black: metaphors create similarities by the interactions of focus and frame. This yields new perspectives, but they are still based on isomorphisms. 39 CH believes that the creativity of metaphors cannot be reduced to antecedent isomorphisms. Metaphors create something not antecedently available and discover what is constrained by something independent of them. 45 The outcome of a metaphor is more than a [new] perspective. Metaphors create integrated wholes that generate more than linguistic items and are something more than conceptual perspectives. 46 In a metaphor function what CH calls ‘meaning units’ (senses: connotations and/or intensions). At least one meaning unit must exhibit intelligibility (apprehending something as actually or possibly part of a system). 51 One can analyze how meaning units interact as constituents of metaphors. 54 The interaction of terms in metaphors is multidirectional. The interdependence of meaning units in metaphors is one of its conditions for the unparaphrasability of metaphors. 57 Perceptual-qualitative conditions (sounds, colors, feeling tones) affect the way that meaning units are interpreted. 59 Three key features of metaphors: 1 tension, 2 (at least) two meaning units (CH calls the primary unit the ‘nucleus’), 3 interrelation of the meaning units in an integration or family resemblance. 71 There are shifts back and forward among multiple meaning units. 72 A metaphor is an integration rather than a synthesis. 73 The meaning units function together without loosing their own identities – they are related in a family resemblance as constituents, as antecedent components and as consequent meanings (transformed by virtue of their interaction). 78 A metaphorical tension suggests at least an open-ended cluster of forthcoming meanings. 80 Differences as well as similarities sustain the family resemblance. 83 Affirm the newness of both reference and meaning. 84 Metaphors can be correct, appropriate or faithful. They ‘convey’ or ‘generate’ insights. They refer to extralinguistic or extraconceptual conditions. 88 What conditions the fittingness of a new insight needs to be something in the world that is not identical with known perspectives. 89 CH: not only focus on the referents of the component terms of metaphors, but also on the referential funciton of metaphors taken as wholes. 91 Disthinguish between reference as a relation and referent as a relatum. 92 A referent is the object (thing, event, conception, expression) of the referring thing. 93 Sense as the meaning (connotation or intension) of a term or expression. The reference of a term is its extension, or the class of objects (not senses) denoted by the referring expression. Reference as designation relates the expression to a single (set of) item(s) (object, event, moment, ‘center of relevance’, individualized, singular, specific locus of meaning). 94 A metaphorical expression creates its significance, thus providing new insight, through designating a unique, extralinguistic and extraconceptual referent that had no place in the intelligible world before the metaphor was articulated. 100 As unique, the referent is singular, it is the only instance of its type, the first token that exemplifies the type. 101 Created referents are unique and thus serve as unprecedented controls on interpretation. 102 Thus it follows that the new referent cannot be the referent of anyone of the metaphor’s component senses. Examples: Juliet-the-sun, [computermind]. 104 Ricoeur: the reference depends on a ‘network of interaction’. 105 R. Jacobson: split reference: one side referring to something not antecedently accessible to language, tension in the interplay between identity [is] and difference [is not]. 106 The referent of the metaphor as a whole is the unique referent that is referred to by virtue of the metaphor's creative force. 107 New referents enter the world of references as new children enter their families. Each takes on characters from, and contributes to, its family context. But each does so because it has its own integrity, its own uniqueness. The extralinguistic object needs not to be physical or spacial – it applies to whatever a name or description is directed – it may be a discrete, substantial object, a temporal moment, a law – whatever may be called a ‘center of relevance’. 108 The extralinguistic condition adds a controlling factor, a locus for the senses. 109 The referent of a creative metaphor must be an individual because of the interdependence between uniqueness and extralinguisticality. The referent of the metaphor functions as an individual. 111 An individual manifests its reality as a confluence of insistent constraints, as a unique focal point of resistance in experience. 112 Creative designation has two directions of fit, getting the world to match the words while getting the words to match the world. 183 From metaphors evolves a realist ontology: the referents of [fresh] metaphors are both created and independently dynamic, 185 at least partially independent of thought, 186 as objective condition of insight partly independent of communal reality. CH’s individuals are not completely mind-dependent (vs idealsm) and not things-in-themselves that are in themselves unknowable (vs Kantianism) They bear a direct, dynamic relation to the senses that they constrain and that give us at least an indirect [?] access to the individuals. 187 No inductive or deductive proof, but reasons (grounds) for CH’s picture of the world: 1 realism coheres better with everyday experience - seems consistent with a large range of pretheoretical experience, 2 we encounter resistances that cannot be readily interpreted if they can be interpreted at all, as mind-independent for individuals (Pierce: reality is not a purely intelligible system of constructs unified by societies). 189 Genius creates appropriate, fitting creations – then there must be a condition that constrains the creation that cannot be reduced to prior ways of organizing experience. 190 Constraints appear to have an origin in what is other than purely social reality as well as the human agent. 191 There is a metaphorical reference to unique objects and that metaphorical referents are in the world. Metaphorical insights both advance our understanding of the world and contribute to creating this understanding. World as a totality of identities (whatever is or could be). 193 Identities may be abstractions as exemplified in instances 194 and have three fundamental aspects: 1 intelligibility (complex of meanings), 2 constraint (or resistance [against arbitrary interpretations]: its articulation/expression is relevant to the world of process and action, facticity), 3 presence (the condition of possible discrimination). 196 Classification of identities into natural identities (active agents and passive things) and artifacts. 198 Metaphors are verbal or nonverbal artifacts. [fresh] metaphors exemplify ‘novelty proper’: newness of a kind of uniqueness of a type whose token exemplifies for the first time the intelligibility of a kind of type. New instances of intelligibility are integral to the intelligibility of the world. As instances of new intelligibility, the metaphors function in fundamental ways in the constitution of the world. 199 They make a difference to the emergence of natural identities in the process of evolution. 200 The metaphor disrupts accepted rules and introduces new rules for finding the world intelligible. 201 The world as condition of resistance is not simply waiting to be discovered – it is something dynamic that evolves and interacts with creative inquiry. 203 Also extra-aesthetic, moral and social aspects of the developing outcome, concern for creations-to-be (Pierce: agape (evolutionary love)). 204 The world itself includes the structures that condition linguistic metaphors – the world itself is integral to metaphorical interaction, at least in its evolutionary dimension. 205 The world as the limit of language. Fundamental to the metaphorical aspect of the world is the interplay of identity and difference: the tension of sameness and idfference is at the root of all ontological discursive pictures. 206 In line with N. Hartmann’s ontological strata, CH proposes the next levels: 1 physical, 2 biological, 3 psychological (reflexivity, self-consciousness), 4 spiritual (aesthetic, moral, social, political, religious). 208 CH’s ontology describes the world as fundamentally evolutionary and as manifesting its evolution in metaphorical interaction and reference that is verbal, nonverbal and extra-conceptual. 211 Pierce: 3 kinds of signs: icon (image, picture, isomorphic structure, metaphorical parallelism), index (referring directly to something singular, e.g. bullet hole as index of a bullet) and symbol (referring to something general, e.g. type or formula for a natural law). 214 The referent is what Pierce calls both a ‘Dynamical Object’ (‘The Real’ which the sign cannot express) and an ‘Immediate Object’ (the Object as represented in the sign). 215 The Dynamic Object is not a Kantian thing-in-itself because it bears a special relation to the Immediate Object of interpretation at each moment in the semiotic process. 216 Interpretation is constrained as it grows and is embodied in Immediate Objects. Dynamic Objects are interpretable by resisting in certain respects, and these respects are interpretable. CH suggests the use of the concept ‘vector’ to indicate that resistances are directional and variably weighted. 217 Positive (what it is) and negative (what it is not) vectors. 221 The Dynamical Object prevents theory from being radically relative. 222 [Theories and] metaphors are not completely self-referential. Dynamical Objects (as objective side of the created referent) constrain Immediate Objects and Immediate Objects are embodied in Dynamical Objects – they form a concrete complex of integrated meanings. 227 Scientific theories converges, bringing Immediate Objects closer to Dynamical Objects. Aestetical metaphors tend to resist this kind of convergence – the referents remain dynamic. [ OBW Metaphors integrate irreducibles – this way they show interdepencency of irreducibles in close interactions as characteristic of a dynamic reality. Creative metaphores do this by establishing fresh cognitive frameworks of perspectives in (or through?) which we learn to know new (created or discovered) referents. Fresh metaphors postpone new truths. ] Have, P. ten & G. Psathas (eds), Situated order : studies in the social organization of talk and embodied activities, 1995 ix ‘interaction’ is the most frequently used collector [in ethnomethodological conversation analysis]. The studies focus on interactional phenomena, i.e. the ‘local’ accomplishment of order, and the ‘methods’ or ‘procedures’ used in that accomplishment. x Settings provide members with sets of resources [‘frames’] for the design and interpretation of action. Schegloff: numbers of turn-taking in talk-in-interaction. xi Czyzweski: different interactional formats in psychotherapeutic work: monological vs dialogical. xii Komter: within the situated order of the court, pre-established knowledge [about the accusations] is tested locally, while persistent general assumptions about knowledge and interests are brought to bear on unique case materials to ground decisions with serious direct and indirect consequences. xiv Harness Goodwin: ‘Situated activity systems’, as well as ‘participation frameworks’, are highly flexible and shifting ‘units’, created and dismissed on the spot according to participants’ needs of the moment. Speech acts are not the product of isolated individuals, but rather assembled achievements emerging from the collaborative workweb of co-present workers, who constantly monitor on-going interaction for their possible involvement in it, work of non-present participants and tools in their work spaces, which provide access to information of various sorts. xvii The studies include talk-in-interaction within an ‘institutional’ or ‘organizational’ setting where the focus is on the collection of data which show some of the types of interactional structures which are endogenously produced in these settings and describe how talk-in-interaction is embedded in and constitutive of the setting. Helm, D.T. e.o. (eds), The Interactional Order. New Directions in the Study of Social Order, 1989 Contributions contain examples of the micro-analytic, ethnomethodological, interactional approach. 161 Social order is not a fixed, static phenomena, nor is it a mysterious creation. The social order is a negotiated, inter-subjectively constructed, emerging achievement that occurs in and through interactions. Human-based computation is a computer science technique in which a computational process performs its function by outsourcing certain steps to humans (Kosorukoff, 2001). This approach leverages differences in abilities and alternative costs between humans and computer agents to achieve symbiotic human-computer interaction. Human-based computation research has its origins in the early work on interactive evolutionary computation. Human-based genetic algorithm (HBGA) encourages human participation in multiple different roles. Humans are not limited to the role of evaluator, but can choose to perform a more diverse set of functions. In particular, they can contribute their innovative solutions into the evolutionary process, make incremental changes to existing solutions, and perform intelligent recombination. Hutchins, E., Distributed Cognition (1995) is a framework (not a method) that involves the co-ordination between individuals and artifacts. It has two key components: 1. the representations that information is held in and transformed across 2. the process by which representations are co-ordinated with each other. These representations can be either in the mental space of the participants or external representations available in the environment. Distributed cognition as a theory of learning, i.e. one in which the development of knowledge is attributed to the system of human agents interacting dynamically with artifacts, has been widely applied in the field of distance learning. Collaborative tagging (or social bookmarking) on the World Wide Web is one of the most recent developments in technological support for distributed cognition. Distributed language is a concept in linguistics that language is not an independent symbolic system used by individuals for communication but rather an array of behaviors that constitute human interaction. The concept of distributed language is based on the biological theory of language and the concept of distributed cognition. intelligence definition Cognitivist approaches define intelligence as a person's (or a system’s) capacity to (1) acquire knowledge (i.e. learn and understand), (2) apply knowledge (solve problems), and (3) engage in abstract reasoning. David Wechsler defines intelligence as the ability to act goal-directed, think rationally and to copy effectively with the environment. measurement Although different cognitive abilities are measured, most of the time the correlations of the scores on these different abilities are significantly high, which substantiates the main argument for treating intelligence as a general or global concept. [ OBW This also works the other way around: there is a strong tendency among intelligence theorists not to admit what could be other types of intelligence if they don’t correlate significantly with the types that have been incorporated already into the tests, because they would perhaps invalidate the tests and lower their predictive value. ] [ OBW the most simple measurement with the highest predictive value would suffice for prediction purposes – e.g. reaction time in specific tasks? ] [ OBW another goal: what do we want the children to know and how do we want them to act? This asks for other tests that provide educational feedback. Why should those tests be mainly knowledge-centered and not also (or even mainly) action-directed? ] [ OBW if all questions in a test only have one correct answer, it’s pretty obvious that this test does not measure something like e.g. creativity ] theories Charles Spearman (1904, 1923, 1927), an early psychometrician, found that schoolchildren's grades across seemingly unrelated subjects were positively correlated, and proposed that these correlations reflected the influence of a dominant factor, which he termed g for "general" intelligence. He developed a model where all variation in intelligence test scores can be explained by two factors. The first is the factor specific to an individual mental task: the individual abilities that would make a person more skilled at one cognitive task than another. The second is g, a general factor that governs performance on all cognitive tasks. According to Stephen Jay Gould (The Mismeasure of Men, 1981) g is simply a mathematical artifact [ of factor analysis – OBW but: is a significant correlation of measurements over different variables not a significant fact that asks for a substantial intepretation? ]. Howard Gardner (1993) contends that the rare condition of savant syndrome argues against a single generalized intelligence. People with savant syndrome may have general IQs in the mentally retarded range but may possess certain mental abilities that are remarkable compared to the average person. These abilities include superior memory, lightning-fast arithmetic calculation, advanced musical ability, rapid language learning and exceptional artistic ability. [ OBW failing argument from exception? ‘there is no general/global intelligence in most people, because in some people only one specific intellectual ability blossoms’ is an argument like: ‘ ’ ] Fluid and crystallized intelligence (abbreviated Gf and Gc, respectively) are factors of general intelligence originally identified by Raymond Cattell (1987). Fluid intelligence is the ability to find meaning in confusion, problem-solving, learning, and pattern recognition. It is the ability to draw inferences and understand the relationships of various concepts, independent of acquired knowledge. Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use skills, knowledge, and experience. It should not be equated with memory or knowledge, but it does rely on accessing information from long-term memory. The terms are somewhat misleading because one is not a "crystallized" form of the other. Rather, they are believed to be separate neural and mental systems. The Triarchic Theory of Intelligence was formulated by Robert J. Sternberg against the psychometric approach to intelligence taking a more cognitive approach. Sternberg’s (1985) definition of human intelligence is "(a) mental activity directed toward purposive adaptation to, selection and shaping of, real-world environments relevant to one’s life". Sternberg’s theory comprises three forms of intelligence: componential/analytic, experiential/creative/synthetic, and practical/contextual. The theory of multiple intelligences was proposed by Howard Gardner in 1983. Gardner's theory argues that intelligence, particularly as it is traditionally defined, does not sufficiently encompass the wide variety of abilities humans display. He distinguishes 8 categories of intelligence: 1 Bodily-kinesthetic, 2 Interpersonal, 3 Verbal-linguistic, 4 Logical-mathematical, 5 Naturalistic (added in 1997), 6 Intrapersonal, 7 Visual-spatial, 8 Musical. Gardner used case studies of autistic savants as part of his theory on multiple intelligences. On one hand they have severe mental disabilities and thus impaired social skills, but on the other they have some extraordinary mental abilities not found in most people. As one would expect from a theory that redefines intelligence, one of the major criticisms of the theory is that it is ad hoc. The criticism is that Gardner is not expanding the definition of the word "intelligence"; rather, he denies the existence of intelligence, as is traditionally understood, and instead uses the word "intelligence" whenever other people have traditionally used words like "ability". This practice has been criticized by Robert J. Sternberg (1983, 1991), Eysenck (1994), and Scarr (1985). Carroll (1993) argued that verbal comprehension, auditory processing, visual perception and ability in logic and mathematics all correlate with each other and are actually subsets of global intelligence. This would give further support for a theory of a single type intelligence. Other critical reviews of MI theory argue that there is little empirical validating evidence to support it and that also cognitive neuroscience research does not provide support for the notion that each of Gardner’s intelligences could operate via a different set of neural mechanisms. Already Binet (one of the founding fathers of intelligence testing) pointed out that intelligence testing should be taken as a method of identifying intellectual deficiencies and special education in order to cope with these deficiencies. interaction physics: interaction of elementary particles. There are four known fundamental interactions in Nature: The electromagnetic, strong, weak, and gravitational interactions. With the possible exception of gravity, these interactions are mediated by the exchange of gauge bosons between particles. Photons are gauge bosons of the electromagnetic interaction (because the photon has no rest mass, this allows for interactions at long distances. The photon is massless, has no electric charge, and does not decay spontaneously in empty space. A photon has two possible polarization states and is described by exactly three continuous parameters: the components of its wave vector, which determine its wavelength λ and its direction of propagation.), W and Z bosons carry the weak interaction, and the gluons carry the strong interaction. The weak and electromagnetic interactions are unified in electroweak theory, which is unified with the strong force in the Standard Model. If the Standard Model could be extented to the gravitational interactions, a for now hypothetically postulated gauge boson ‘graviton’ could mediate the force of gravity in the framework of quantum field theory. chemistry/medicin: additive (effect as sum of the effects of different medecins), synergistic (effect more than that of the separate medicins) and antagonistic (lower effects of medicins through their combination) interaction. genetics: different genetic interaction modes characterize how the combination of two mutations affect (or does not affect) the phenotype: noninteractive, synthetic, asynthetic, suppressive, epistatic, conditional, additive, single-nonmonotonic and double-nonmonotonic. Further characterizations are enhancement interaction and nonadditive interaction. biology: e.g. how cells communicate, and an example of humans – birds- fish interactions sociology: Social interactions can be differentiated into accidental, repeated, regular, and regulated. Social interactions form the basis for social relations. cf e.g. the next Japanese concepts that reciprocally constitute each other: uchi (inside, self) – soto (outside, society), ura (in-back, hidden from others) – omote (in-front, surface appearance), ninjoo (personal feelings) – giri (social obligations), honne (inner life of feelings) – tatemae (social obligations), which index pluralistic and dynamic interactions (Bachnik, 1994). statistics: an interaction is a term in a statistical model in which the effect of two, or more, variables is not simply additive. informatics: In the "contingency view" of interactivity, there are three levels: Noninteractive, when a message is not related to previous messages; Reactive, when a message is related only to one immediately previous message; and Interactive, when a message is related to a number of previous messages and to the relationship between them. According to Rada Roy (1996) the ‘Human Computer Interaction Model’ might consists of 4 main components which consist of HUMAN, COMPUTER, TASK ENVIRONMENT and MACHINE ENVIRONMENT. In computer science, interactivity refers to software which accepts and responds to input from humans—for example, data or commands. If the response is complex enough, it is said that the system is conducting social interaction and some systems try to achieve this through the implementation of social interfaces. McMillan (2005) states that interactivity can occur at many different levels and degrees of engagement and that it is important to differentiate between these levels: user-to-user interaction via the internet; para-social interaction, where new forms of media are generated online; and user-to-system interactivity which is the way devices can be engaged with by a user. Interactional expertise is part of a more complex classification of expertise developed by Harry Collins and Robert Evans (both based at Cardiff University) and first published in Social Studies of Science in June 2002 (Collins and Evans 2002). In this initial formulation interactional expertise was part of a threefold classification of substantive expertise that also included ‘no expertise’ and ‘contributory expertise’, by which they meant the expertise needed to contribute fully to all aspects of a domain of activity. Difference between interactional expertise (what the researcher has, being able to talk with plumbers and physicists about plumbing and experiments) and contributory expertise (what the plumbers and physicists have). In the case of contributory expertise, tacit knowledge relating to both the language and practice must be acquired. In standard philosophy of knowledge the key distinction is between knowledge that is embodied and knowledge that is formally and explicitly articulated. In this dichotomous formulation, knowledge exists either as codified rules and facts or as some intangible property of the body that performs the task. This distinction forms the basis of the key debate about Artificial Intelligence research in which Hubert Dreyfus, starting from Heidegger, argued that because computers don’t have bodies they can’t do what humans do and will not, therefore, succeed in becoming intelligent, no matter how sophisticated and detailed the knowledge base and rules with which they are programmed (see Dreyfus 1972). In 1990, Harry Collins developed an alternative critique of AI: because computers are asocial objects that cannot be socialised into the life of a community, so then they cannot be intelligent. Distinction of action as mimeomorphic action (action performed in the same way each time and thus amenable to mechanical reproduction) and polimorphic action (actions that depend on context and local convention for their correct interpretation and continuation and thus not reproducible by machines, however sophisticated). Interactional expertise thus raises a key question about the "amount" of embodiment that is needed for expertise to be transferred. For proponents of the embodiment thesis, quite a lot of embodiment is needed as the expertise resides in the relative position, movement and feel of the body. From the perspective of interactional expertise much less embodiment is needed and, taken to its logical minimum, perhaps only the ability to hear and speak are needed. [ OBW that seems to be a claim for the sufficiency of linguistic/symbolic interaction - back again at the level of the Church-Turing thesis? (see below) ] Interactive computation involves communication with the external world during the computation. This is in contrast to the traditional understanding of computation which assumes a simple interface between a computing agent and its environment, consisting in asking a question (input) and generating an answer (output). The famous Church-Turing thesis [ = if an algorithm (a computational procedure that terminates) exists, then there is an equivalent Turing machine, recursively-definable function, or applicable λ-function, for that algorithm ] attempts to define computation and computability in terms of Turing machines. However the Turing machine model only provides an answer to the question of what computability of functions means and, with interactive tasks not always being reducible to functions, it fails to capture our broader intuition of computation and computability. Ismael, J.T., The Situated Self, 2007 6 The mind-world is a dynamical relation, rather than an intentional relation (vs Frege). Frege: components of thought seen as abstract objects with intentional properties. Dynamics: components of thought seen as mental particulars with nonintrinsic (causal/informational) relations to their referents. Representational media are e.g. experience, language, thought, exchanging information. 7 All media have contexts of application. Fred Dretske e.o.: information as the right conceptual vantage point from which to understand the relation mind-world. Part of the mind is engaged in self-modeling as late addition to a largely self-organizing bureaucracy (emergent organization). 8 John Perry: reflexive structure of indexical expressions. Velleman: identities of selves (< Locke): hidden causal links as constitutive of man’s identity over time. Anscome: dualism (< first persons vs third-persons, cf Nagel). Escher pictures: context of one interpretation receding in, or leading up in the context of other interpretation. 11 Frege: lanuage-mind-world, primary interest: thougth about mathematical objects (suffering from blindness toward the context-sensitivity of thought). 12 Frege: sense determines reference (sense bearing semantical properties) > concepts as packets of theory-like knowledge. 13 Truth-conditions of thoughts can be context-dependent or context-independent. Burge (Sinning against Frege): belief de re – reference in the absence of individuating concepts. I, cf first person thoughts by delusional subjects (e.g. the deluded Heimson who thought he was Hume, or Rip van Winkle who woke up and believed it was the day he fell in sleep). 17 Perry: thougth without representation (thought exp Z-land weather) 18 Why do we represent? 19 Increase of information for the regulation of behavior, ideas as mental particulars, have a practical role in coordinating the behavior of the embodied, embedded agent. Largely non-conceptual, non-intellectual interactions among the brain/body and the world – Fregean thougth parasitic on that fact. 21 Sense (assumed to be an individuating concept) determines reference according to Frege. 22 Argument from confinement. Putnam:
28 Fixed points are mapped onto themselves – they can be used by R(epresentation) as internal point of reference in callibrating the rest of its content against D (the domain of representation), cf the red dot on the map (‘you are here’). 30 A centered map is incorporated into the navigational activity of a situated agent. 31 Interpretation = adopt an associative convention A-B coordination = establish the causal and contextual relation A-B Ramsey & Dretske: representations as ‘maps that we steer by’ (..) in the causal pathways from perception to action – for this self-location (self-representation) is needed. 33 Thougth interprets representations but thought itself doesn’t need to be interpreted. Semantic links connect words with words in a language and ideas with ideas in a mind. Architectural links connect representational elements with their subject-matter or with elements in other media [domains]. 34 internal models of self and situation: the mind keeps them wired into the [perceptual and motor] pathways [of our body] with self-locating acts – the mind has an active role in regulation its relations to the environment. So we can abandon the intentional vocabulary [ and replace it by a ] special class of reflexive or self-referential thoughts. 37 experience > (conscious) mind > volition/action. Representations are two-place relations between internal map and external landscape. Dynamical relations are three-place relations between internal elements, external elements and ranges of contexts. 38 nt 3 Assumed that the mental supervenes on the physical – so the physical laws carry over [?] to the mental realm and we get a smooth dynamics that is indifferent to ontology. 39 Interpretation is always given in a medium (eg legenda in a map relating map-symbols with the represented landmarks). 40 Interpretation connects ideas to ideas & associated impressions. Coordination = forming a chain that acts as a single medium leading back to the subject matter of the first medium. 41 Ideas are linked to the external world (concepts to properties, notions to objects), not by special meaning-giving mental performances (‘intending’) but by chains of coordinated media; interaction of internal and external components of the coordinating chains. 42 signal transformation: sensory > brain > experience, perceptual belief > cogitation, inference, selfconscious theorizing.
44 Thought as intrasubjective medium, language as intersubjective medium. 46 A has property p = A exemplifies p. Representational media represent and exemplify properties. The word red in black ink represents redness but exemplifies blackness. [ The word red represents and exemplifies redness ] 47 Selfdescription is the descriptive analogue of self-location. 48 The concept ‘salt’ is linked semantically to salty taste, which is linked causally to the chemical compound NaCl. Difference between natural and conventional representation. 50 If everything works as it should, [natural] information flows from the world through experience into the representational network of thougth, which leads to locomotion. 51 phenomenal profiles are promoted to representations by getting caught up in thought – the content is partially ‘up to us’ (conventional). 52 the self-representational loop is the self-conscious deliberative process that mediates self-location and generates prescriptions for action. 53 We are wired to think & act spatially (spacial navigation). The coordination of concepts with the world is a much slower process. 54 reflexive representation: it is what is represents. 55 Our models capture both the way things are and the way they hang together under change. 56 Building a representational loop into a system gives it a way of reorganizing its own internal architecture in response to external exigencies, with speed and flexibility. 57 Using the difference of physical and phenomenological implies a dualism of concepts without a dualism of properties. nt 8 physical events have to be implicitly definable in phenomenal terms nt 9 the concept ‘having a length of 1 m’ is an analogue of a phenomenal concept 60 concepts are ideas of properties. Phenomenal profiles are reidentifiable patterns of light, color, sound etc that serve as a basis for the recognition of properties. the concept ‘properties’ is used in a noncommital extensional sense. 65 Phenomenal profiles act as interface between the internal and external landscape. 72 Information from experience is situated – we can express it in a form that is portable across spacetime and all kinds of contexts > for that, features of its location have to be inserted into the content of its states, sc. the spacetime & personal parameters > much structure is reified between our ears (sc world-models). 75 Loosening ties between experience and ideas, ideas have a life of their own in a representational network. Dretske: Why do we have conscious access to the intrinsic properties of experience? 76 What is the evolutionary advantage of selfrepresentation? Brains are biologically attuned to environments, the brain has to fit into its environment like a key into a lock. Cosmides & Tuoby: the Dilemma of General Intelligence (in the relation of signals and circumstances) 77 way out: vary sensory states with context – that’s what selfrepresentation does. Dependence on environments leads to instability in the significance of experience across contexts. 78 dynamic freedom: the dynamic role of signals to transform with context, keeping behavior in sync with circumstance. 79 We use representational states by mentioning them. cf only a language that can both use and mention its own expressions, can form sentences that relativize their content to context. 82 intrinsic intentionality (= objective purport) as a property of representational media, incorporating the external perspective from which the vehicle can be distinguished from the content ( > eg distinguish ‘seems’ from ‘is’ ) Thougth is a primary source of intentionality, connecting self-representation to intrinsic intentionality, its roots in phylogenetic primitive selftransforming capacities. 83 Thougth stands at the receiving end of objective significance and is the soure of objective purport. Experience in the mind modifies an internal model of self and situation, the objective components reflecting the world, the reflexive components tracking the system’s own location. 84 The respons-function maps stimuli onto responses. A non-self-representing system can reshape its response function through conditioning. 85 A self-representing system has a rich body of simultaneous dispositions that permit differential response to the same stimulus depending on the values of self-locating parameters. Conditioning allows adaptation, selfrepresentation supports genuinely flexible response to changing values of selflocating parameters. non-adaptive systems – eg tables, rocks adaptive systems – eg neural nets, pets selfrepresenting systems – e.g. cars/ships steered by GPS 86 Selfrepresentation is possible in the brain through reshaping the networks of connection among neurons that encode the information. I suggests a central self-representing sub-system, a kind of central command that smacks to some kind of Cartesian Theatre [OBW vs Dennett] 88 Person’s responses are often unpredictable, holistically dependent on idiosyncraticies of personal history. Examples of self-organizing systems: brooksian robots, insect colonies, slime moulds, schools of fish, free-market-economies. In contract with self-organizing systems the notion of flexibility gets sharpened. 89 Differences in the internal dynamics (eg between a colony of ants and a human being) show up on the outside in how flexible it reponds to external influences. Dretske: reasons (which are available from an external perspective) are design-explainers, bringing connections between causes and their effects under the system’s control. 90 Continuous interaction between the nervous system, the body and the environment > adaptive behavior. Selfrepresentation adds a way of decoupling the body from the environment > adaptation by corrective judgements by adding degrees of internal freedom that allow the system to adjust spontaneously to changes of the situation > a much more robust balance. (..) 153 The unseen seer, tracing the path it carves out, is pure illusion, an artifact of the unfolding psychological history, characterized by a continuous cycle of selflocation. 154 It may have its root in something as simple as the grammatical illusion. 155 Observable properties (touchstones, by which the quantities, that figure in scientific descriptions, are identified) are the most direct epistemological interface between phenomenal states and the public environment. 156 Our referential grip on the extensions of theoretical terms is mediated by their reaction to observable properties (empiricists) > the interpretation of physical vocabulary transforms with shifts in causal relations between phenomenal states and the observable properties we use them to track. 157All descriptive vocabulary has a hidden reflexive component that relates it ultimately to phenomenal states. 158 The interpretation of our descriptive vocabulary is dependent on the causal relations between phenomenal states and the environment. (..) 167 Descartes implicitely professes a purely reflexive understanding of ‘I’ in identifying his subject matter, but makes use of something richer [ sc ontologically inflated conception of the self – res cogitans ] in allowing intersubstitution. How to come from the purely reflexive ‘I’ of the individual thought to the ‘I’ of the temporal continuant? 169 We can refer to ourselves without any conceptualization at all (cf Kant, Strawson: the central mystery of the self) [ difference between ‘I’ and other indexicals ]. 170 Bennet: to think of myself as a plurality of things is to think of my being constituted of this plurality, and that pre-requires an undivided me. 179
181 We begin to self-ascribe thoughts and pains if and when we find a use for ascribing them to others. What makes two ‘I’-thougts experiences of the same self? ‘I’ is learned mechanically without explicit reference to or conceptualization of selves. 182 We don’t need to represent those relations [..] in order to reidentify the self. External informational relations flow without passing through perceptual or linguistic channels, tie the events along a single stream of consciousness, provide the principle of identity for selves over time. self = a sealed pocket of world-representing structure, communicating with its environment through controlled channels. 183 These channels are all part of the architectural background. The flow of information is unmediated by anything in the intentional foreground of thought. 184 Wiring and connections in the background [of our architecture] keep the information flowing smoothly across the intentional foreground. Pure Lockean view: causal relations of the information in the intentional foreground of thought (cf also James). 186 What is unique to ‘I’ as a term in thought, is that the facts that govern intersubstitutability of ‘I’-occurrences are external to and need not to be represented in thought. 188 GPS – ‘here I am now’. Human: ‘here I am now’ + dynamic record of personal past – why? Info of the past in the deliberative loop makes possible: promises, commitments, projects etc. 189 Pure Lockean view:
Pure Locekan view: all internal accord is the contingent product of the external causal and informational links that are the real, constitutive grounds of identity. Our beliefs about ourselves play no role in determining the target of our I-thoughts. 190 The facts that are constitutive of identy are external to psychological states. 191 Wittgenstein: The philosophical I is (..) not the human body or the human soul with psychological properties, but the metaphysical subject, the boundary (not a part) of the world (Notebooks, 79).
193 W: the second use of ‘I’ (as subject) does not really involve reference. To say ‘I have pain’ is no more a statement about a particular person than moaning is (The Blue and Brown Books, 66,67). 194 Frege: no reference without sense. No sense (in the case of ‘I"), so no reference. 195 Anscombe: 3 classes of I-thoughts:
196 Strawson vs W & A: reference to the subject of experiences as mine is ineliminable. A no-subject position is solipsistic. 197 But there are thoughts and experiences that are not one’s own. Pure Lockean view sees I-occurences as special cases of indexical identification and stresses the role of architectural (non-conceptual) links in securing reference. 198 References in those very special cases [ of I-occurrences] are not mediated by a sense. 199 Augustine: the mind is certain of being alone, which alone it is certain of being (De Trinitate, book X). Descartes:
D vs selfrepresentation as principle task in the intrinsic dynamics of the body. D vs the fiction of a central controller (Conscious Explained) D: there is no central command in the brain, but multiple processing streams, non-intersecting causal and informational pathways from sensory (..) directly into motor pathways (..), no inner self. 203 D: Coordinated acivity arises from the joint operation of autonomous subcomponents. Evolution eliminated God, neuroscience eliminates the self – both by providing a self-organizing explanation (The Origin of Selves, Cogito 3, 163-173). D refers to a lot of systems in nature that give the impression of centralized control, but which is misleading. Selforganization = ? behavior of complex dynamical systems. 204 Subcomponents are locked into coordinated patterns of behavior. 205 JTI disputes the suggestion that the [from autonomous informational streams] resulting monologue is a just-so-story, fabricated for an external audience with no role in the intrinsic dynamics of the body. It’s an important unifying role that a self-centered portrait can play. Navigation goes in cycles in order to move to the intended direction. 206 Map-keeping subsystems (having a central position as locus of information and control) perform computational cycles: self-location > representation of ends > instrumental reasoning > action. Our self-centered maps are not fictional portraits of an inner subject, but portraits of the world (..), centered reflexively on the body and (..) on the mind. 207 Also include the less clearly defined conative and emotional components that contribute to the full, felt quality of life. Language can convey the content and structure, but not the quality of experience. 208 Maps are put to use in our decisions what to do. Representations as maps we steer by. Epistemic (spatial, temporal and sensory) components of perspective needs a fourth: the mind’s effective perspective, telling how changes in the own state propagate into the landscape. 209 Kant: unity of the self as unity of a point of view. 211 Types of dynamical organization as models of human selves:
Dennett: understand naturalistically the ways in which brains grow self-representations (..) aspirant to a high order of self-control (..) capacity to represent his current beliefs, desires, intentions and policies (..) What is special about the human mind/intelligence? D: language as its source – used to lable the states of ourselves. JTI: language is rooted in the development of explicit self-representation > self-regulation, self-control > sources of qualities that constitute us as persons. 215 Change with changes in situation – explicit representation of the situated self (..) depending on the values of self-locating parameters – it adds degrees of freedom that allow to adjust responses spontaneously to changes in its situation. Cognitive structures are self-organizing at the foundation – the central, self-representing sybsystem can be seen as a later addition. We steer by maps because it brings all of the information accumulated over a lifetime (..) into the path between perception and response. 216 Understand the contents of perceptual states and acts of will as self-locating and self-descriptive 219 the brain transforms sensory information into experience and feeds it into thought where it is passed through a deliberative loop that terminates in volition (..) translated into motion. Sensory stimulation > experience > {epistemic theorizing} > self-representational loop (computed in thought) > willfull act > behavior. Selfconsciousnes is not consciousness. 220 Selfconsciousness (take its own states as reflexive objects) is a formal, relational property, the synchronic unity of the self. 221 Most physical systems are wavelike in that the properties, that make them interesting dynamical units at the macroscopic level, are independent of the identity of their components over time. New type of unity: complex systems that steer by maps – internal reconstructions of the external environment. 222 3 types of unities emerge:
I from within: I am the frame of the world, containing the whole I from without: the world is the frame and I am somewhere in the picture 230 Both pictures are internally consistent, but together they seem to present an impossible Escheresque construction, each containing the other. History of philosophy can be seen as a series of failed attempts to reconstruct one in the other. Reconciliation: reflexive structure – the self is contained in the world in the way a map of x might be contained in x, and it contains the world in the way that x is contained in the map – related senses of containment. 231 Not look for reduction [eg to physics], but try to understand whether we can integrate our mental lives into the closed causal order described by physics. Prins, A.W., Uit Verveling, 2007 1 Bij wijze van inleiding Ieder mens, waar hij de zon ook voor het eerst op en onder heeft zien gaan, gaat gedurende zijn leven (en dit geschiedt gewoonlijk in de nadagen van zijn jeugd) wel enkele maanden of jaren gebukt onder een geweldige onverschilligheid, een algehele moedeloosheid en lethargie waar hij wel onmiddellijk aan toe lijkt te moeten geven. Hij begeeft zich naar zijn kamer, legt zich - niet zelden volledig gekleed - behoedzaam op een divan en verzinkt in een urenlange sluimering die, al naar gelang de opvoeding en de aard van de betrokkene, zo nu en dan wordt doorkruist door vergeefse voornemens, vage bespiegelingen of pijnlijke gevoelens van schuld en schaamte. Nu kunnen wij de mensheid eenvoudig in twee groepen indelen: een heel groot aantal lieden dat deze periode zoals dat heet ‘te boven komt’, en een veel kleinere groep, die zich in het geheel niet uit hun sluimerpartij weet los te rukken, die de brug naar de werkelijkheid maar niet weet te slaan, voor wie de dagelijkse maaltijd al een telkens terugkerende opgave is en die zich eenvoudig geweldige zorgen maakt over de beslommeringen die hun eigen begrafenis ooit met zich mee zal brengen. De eerste groep bestaat uit lieden die zich - zoals gezegd - aan de onverschilligheid weten te onttrekken. Dit geschiedt gewoonlijk als volgt: zij kiezen een aantal willekeurige idealen, een stropdas en een werkkring (met gelegenheid tot thuis- en overwerk); steken zich vervolgens tot over de oren in de schulden, kopen een ruim appartement en plaatsen dit vol snuisterijen, vazen, meubelstukken en tapijten, zodat er dagelijks op zijn minst een uur of meer mee gemoeid is het ‘ergste stof’ te verwijderen. Daarna kopen zij planten die besproeid moeten worden, schaffen een hond aan, een konijn, een kat of een vis die verzorging behoeft, en zodra zij dit alles met toenemende efficiëntie kunnen afhandelen, treden zij met de een of andere Frits, Cora of Edgar in het huwelijk, nemen er een aantal hummeltjes bij die telkens uit de suikerpot moeten worden gehaald en die de aandacht behoeven die iemand nu eenmaal behoeft die om de haverklap een knikker of een spijker in de mond steekt. Naast deze bezigheden zijn er natuurlijk de postzegel-, munten- en antiekverzamelingen die zich laten aanleggen, er zijn cursussen in wijnkennis, handlezen en oosterse filosofie, en dan is er - niet te vergeten - het verenigingsleven, waar de bardienst wacht, het secretariaat, de opvang van de jeugd, het bezoeken van zieke leden... En de tweede groep? De tweede groep is eenvoudig doodmoe geworden van de eerste. Zij ligt nog steeds op de divan, zich stierlijk te vervelen. De verveling is in zekere zin het ‘ongeluk van het geluk’. Zij treft alleen degene die het goed gaat. De berooide mens verveelt zich niet. Wie in zak en as zit of verscheurd wordt door verdriet, verveelt zich niet. Wie wordt nagezeten door een man of een vrouw met een mes, verveelt zich niet. Wie zich ellendig voelt, omdat hij een vrije verhouding is begonnen en zijn vrouw en de minnaar van zijn vrouw een ontbijt op bed moet brengen en naar boven roepen moet, of 'hij ook een eitje wil', verveelt zich niet. Verveling is ‘n leidmotief van de negentiende eeuwse Russische literatuur De paradox van een absolute beschikbaarheid en de onmacht zich daadwerkelijk in te zetten tekent de negatieve Russische mens. Wanneer de paradox onbewust blijft, leidt dit tot de lamlendige verveling van Oblomow. Wordt de paradox beseft, dan kan de verveling in nihilisme ontaarden en wanhopige en verwoestende vormen aannemen. Opmerkelijk is bijvoorbeeld dat de Grieken de verveling naar het schaduwrijk hebben verbannen. Eerst in de Hades treffen wij de echte Griekse helden van de verveling: Sisyfos, in zijn oneindig zinloze arbeid, Tantalus, in zijn voortdurend gefrustreerd verlangen en de Danaïden, voor altijd vergeefs water gietend in een bodemloos vat. Veel voorspellend is de onrustige, ontevreden verveling, het taedium vitae, de ‘afkeer van het bestaan’ en de infelix inertia, de ‘ongelukkige traagheid’, waarmee de welvarende Romein zo vertrouwd was. Seneca: Hier komt de verveling vandaan, die afkeer van zichzelf: de mens merkt tot zijn weerzin dat hij aan zichzelf is overgelaten Na de heremieten waren het de monniken die door verveling werden geplaagd en de horror loci van hun eenzame, slechts aan God gewijde cel ontvluchten, strijdend tegen het complex van siccitas, ‘uitdroging van de ziel’, tristitia, ‘droefheid’; desidia, de ‘verlamming van de wil’; pigritia, ‘luiheid’ en acedia. Pascal: Niets is zo onverdraaglijk voor de mens als in volledige rust te zijn, zonder hartstochten, zonder werk, zonder verstrooiing, zonder inspanning. Dan voelt hij zijn nietigheid, zijn verlatenheid, zijn ontoereikendheid, zijn afhankelijkheid, zijn onmacht, zijn leegheid. Aanstonds stijgt uit het diepst van zijn ziel de verveling op, de somberheid, de droefgeestigheid, het verdriet, de spijt, de wanhoop. Dit blijkt al bij willekeurig welk toneelstuk. Een ridder zoekt zijn jonkvrouw. Deze is - naar oud gebruik - opgesloten in een kasteel. Na een barre tocht vol tegenspoed wordt zij bevrijd. De held sluit haar in zijn armen. En wat gebeurt er? Het doek valt. Wat kan er nog getoond worden, behalve verveling? Een nieuw toneelstuk kan pas beginnen wanneer de held twee draken en drie bergen verder een nieuwe geliefde ontwaart. Maar wanneer dat bestaan eenmaal is veiliggesteld, weten ze er niets mee aan te vangen. Daarom is de tweede drijfveer die hen in beweging brengt, het streven de last van het bestaan kwijt te raken, het onvoelbaar te maken, 'de tijd te doden', dat wil zeggen ontsnappen aan de verveling. Zo zien we dan ook dat bijna alle mensen die zijn vrijgesteld van nood en zorgen en eindelijk alle lasten van zich afgewenteld hebben, voortaan zichzelf tot last zijn. In de twintigste eeuw is de verveling niet langer een motief naast andere, het is - naar Kuhn - het dominante thema dat als een persisterende obsessie de werken van contemporaine schrijvers binnendringt. In de hier - grof - geschetste Taal der Verveelden tekent zich een ontwikkeling af. Steeds onverbiddelijker ademt de leegte ons in het gezicht. De verveling is niet langer een terzijde te schuiven of te overkomen ongemak van de onrustige mens. Het is evenmin een karakterkwaal van onvoldoende gelovigen of neurasthene misantropen. Ook van klassenverschillen trekt de verveling zich inmiddels niets meer aan. De verveling heeft zich als een ‘onaangename gast’ in de westerse wereld gevestigd, en er is niets dat er op wijst dat deze gast voornemens is te vertrekken. 2 Wetenschappelijke oriëntatie in de verveling Een eerste vraag naar de methode Ook hier in eerste instantie de autobiografische weg volgen. Want wellicht is dit voor ons hedendaagsen de enige filosofisch nog haalbare gedaante van de methode: de meta-hodos - het na-gaan van een afgelegde weg. Niet alle schrijvers hebben begrip van verveling. Zo merkt Komrij met onverholen minachting op: 'De verveling is me zowel onbekend als wezensvreemd. Ik heb er nooit zelfs een seconde aan geleden. Ik ken het woord, ja zeker, maar ongeveer op de manier waarop een bosneger het woord sneeuw kent. Uit een schoolboek, van de televisie, van horen zeggen.' En in totaal onbegrip: 'Ik stel me bij een persoon die zich verveelt iemand voor die nergens trek in heeft, alles al heeft gezien, nog met geen honderdponder een schim van een interessante gedachte uit zijn hersens kan afvuren, doelloos in het niets staart, de tijd tergend langzaam aan zich voorbij ziet glijden en voor het slapengaan nog even een boek van Willem Brakman leest.' Met de gangbare definities kom je ook niet veel verder. Die zijn natuurlijk ruimschoots voorhanden. bv Van Dale meldt bij verveling: 'een onaangenaam gevoel, ontstaan door een onbevredigde drang naar nieuwe gewaarwordingen' (het is of er onder ‘huwelijk’ werd gezocht, of onder: ‘een vaste baan’). Er zijn echter ook allerlei fenomenen die met de verveling samenhangen, maar er toch ook van verschillen of slechts een - letterlijk - ‘eventueel’ moment van de verveling uitmaken: ik noem - zonder aanspraak op volledigheid - weerzin, onmacht, apathie, vertwijfeling, zinloosheid, eenzaamheid en vervreemding. Zo kent de verveling ook een ‘eigen-aardige’ onrust en een zucht naar verstrooiing die samenhangen met de patstelling die de verveling behelst en die dus in zekere zin deel uitmaken van de verveling zelf. Terecht merkt Greenson op, dat de verveling zich 'gemakkelijker laat beschrijven dan bepalen'. Er zal worden betoogd, dat de verveling een voor ons hedendaagsen opmerkelijk existentiaal en epochaal fenomeen is. In de verschillende Europese talen worden twee verschillende momenten van de verveling benadrukt. Zo wordt in het Duitse Langeweile vooral het tijdsbeleven gearticuleerd, terwijl in het Franse ennui, het Engelse boredom, het Italiaanse noia, het Spaanse aburrimiento, enojo en tedio, het Deense kjedsommelighed en het Russische skoeka, toska, en lisjni een gemoedstoestand centraal staat, reikend van landerige ontevredenheid tot een regelrechte afkeer van het bestaan. In lexicografische termen kan aan de verveling een elliptische betekenisstructuur worden toegekend, met twee semantische brandpunten, waarin respectievelijk het tijdsbeleven en het gemoed worden benadrukt. Hoewel de tijd in de verveling onmiskenbaar lang valt, lijkt het beter te spreken van een verstoord tijdsbeleven.11 In de verveling is de tijd vooral in wanorde geraakt. onderscheiden van de gewone, alledaagse, exogene verveling van een meer fundamentele endogene verveling, die het hele gevoelsleven beheerst en alle dingen van hun kleur en betekenis berooft. Luypens dilemma in diens introspectieve onderzoek is echter, dat wie zich geïnteresseerd over de verveling buigt, deze juist dreigt te verdrijven. Het onderzoek is vervolgens aangewezen op het in de herinnering intuïtief schouwen van de verveling. Maar deze objectiverende reconstructie loopt het gevaar dat momenten van de ‘oorspronkelijke’ ervaring aan de aandacht ontsnappen. De introspectie wordt retrospectie met alle problemen vandien. 3.2 Fysiologie van de verveling Chronische vermoeidheid en een gebrek aan levenslust hangen bijvoorbeeld niet zelden samen met leverdeficiëntie en met nierkwalen. Ook in de depressie heerst tenslotte een algeheel gebrek aan levenslust en verschijnt de wereld als een kleur- en zinloos geheel. De verveling zou dan verklaard kunnen worden uit een functioneel tekort aan mono-aminen, zoals de neurotransmitters serotonine en noradrenaline. Wel is het zo, dat in neurofysiologische termen één van de beste middelen tegen verveling endorfine is: een lichaamseigen morfine, die in de hersenen wordt aangemaakt bij lichamelijke inspanning. 3.3 Psychologie van de verveling: experiment en empirie O’Hanlon, Boredom: Practical Consequences and a Theory: De verveling wordt daartoe bepaald als 'een uitzonderlijke psycho-fysische toestand, teweeggebracht door langdurige blootstelling aan monotone sensore stimulatie'. Voorondersteld is telkens de mens als een prikkelgevoelig en prikkelverwerkend systeem. Maar wie ’s morgens in de spiegel kijkt, ziet daar toch geen verfomfaaide ‘black box’? volsta ik met de meer algemene conclusie dat sensorische monotonie inderdaad geen noodzakelijke, noch een voldoende voorwaarde voor verveling is. Beslissend is de beoordeling of perceptie van een bepaalde situatie als monotoon en oninteressant. Dit alles laat onverlet, dat de gedragswetenschappelijke onderzoekingen toch enigszins teleurstellen. Door de pragmatische en instrumentele benadering wordt de complexiteit van de verveling niet werkelijk geadresseerd, ook niet wanneer allerlei persoonlijke predisposities worden verdisconteerd. De aandacht blijft gericht op de omgang met monotonie en prikkel deprivatie. 3.4 Psychoanalyse: de onbewuste grondslag van de verveling Kenmerkend voor de verveling is, dat er een innerlijke spanning bestaat, die niet tot manifeste driftimpulsen voert. Er is wel driftspanning, maar geen driftdoel. Freud wijst er op, dat de melancholie een symptoom kent dat in de rouw ontbreekt: de ineenstorting van het gevoel van eigenwaarde. Toch kan Freuds analyse van de melancholie niet onverkort op de verveling worden toegepast. Zo uit zich de narcistische regressie in de melancholie onder meer in de weigering van voedsel (idem, 81), terwijl toestanden van verveling juist gericht zijn op het opvullen van een innerlijke leegte: eten, en vooral: roken en drinken. 63 Ook de zelfmoordneigingen van de melancholicus sporen niet met de eigenaardige ‘vitaliteit’ van de verveling. De vraag is wat nu werkelijk in de verveling wordt afgeweerd, wat werkelijk het ‘Ik’ bedreigt. In het volgende hoofdstuk zal worden voorgelegd, dat dit uiteindelijk het Dasein zelf is. 3.5 Psychopathologie het verschijnen van de ziekte als een extreme gedaante van het normale. Het normale leven voltrekt zich volgens Rümke in verschillende configuraties van openheid en geslotenheid. Het leven is zelfs als zodanig een voortdurend zich openen en sluiten. In bepaalde toestanden wordt dit in extremo manifest: in de zwaarste vormen van schizofrenie ligt het lichaam in onstilbare angst schrijnend open, in diepe vormen van melancholie en depressie heerst de doffe beleving van de grootste ‘dichtheid’. In de depressie is, net als in de verveling, de wereld leeg, maar niet het Ik. Het Ik is in de depressie zwaar en de fantasie rijk, zij het morbide. 81 In de verveling is het Ik leeg. Waar het de leegte van het Ik betreft is de verveling daarom meer verwant met apathie. De leegte in de verveling is evenwel niet volstrekt apathisch. Maar wat is nu die leegte van de verveling? Is het de leegte van een onbewust gemis, zoals de psychoanalyse inzake de melancholie opmerkt, is het de leegte van verdrongen orale, anale of oedipale verlangens, zoals Fenichel, Greenson, Winterstein en Spitz menen, of heerst er in de verveling een andere, wellicht meer ‘fundamentele’ leegte? 3.6 Verveling en existentiële leegte meer fundamenteel menselijk probleem: de ervaring van de zinloosheid van het bestaan. Behalve agressie bieden allerhande verdovende middelen een momentane uitvlucht uit de leegte van de verveling. Met name de kunstmatige versnelling van het leven, middels ‘vervelingsdrugs’ als cocaïne, amfetamine en xtc, biedt aan meer dan een enkeling een tijdelijke opschorting van de existentiële impasse. Misschien gaat het bij het ‘existentiële vacuüm’, het weggevallen ‘geestelijk middelpunt’ en de ‘noögenische neurosen’ niet zozeer om het ontbreken van (een) zin, maar om de meer heikele kwestie dat er misschien geen zin bestaat. de vraag naar de ‘menselijke conditie’ die deze ‘behoefte’ aan zin teweeg zou brengen. 4. Antropologie van de verveling Russell aarzelt of directe voorgangers van de homo sapiens in staat zijn geweest tot verveling, maar aangezien hij er geen heeft kunnen vinden - Russell kende de Rotterdamse wijk Crooswijk niet - besluit hij ertoe de verveling als een exclusief menselijk fenomeen te benoemen. Cioran: 'ledigheid is goddelijk' - de behoefte aan steeds iets nieuws is kenmerkend voor ‘verdoolde gorilla’s.' Volgens Kant bedreigt de verveling overigens uitsluitend de gecultiveerde mens, omdat deze een besef heeft van de voortschrijdende tijd en daarom ook de horror vacui van de lege, lange tijd kan ervaren. De psychiater Kuiper spreekt in dit verband het vermoeden uit, dat de vraag naar de zin van het bestaan als zodanig een symptoom is van een beginnende depressie. Misschien is de verveling geen keerzijde, geen schaduwzijde van het bestaan, geen ‘gebrek aan levenslust’, geen ‘gebrek aan prikkels’, geen ‘afweermechanisme’, geen ‘onmacht’ het leven zin te geven of te ‘verwerkelijken, waartoe niet-verveelden ‘wel’ in staat zouden zijn. Voor een radicaal doordenken van het leven schieten niet alleen binaire opposities tekort, maar ook wetenschappelijke analyses die op allerlei vooronderstellingen omtrent het menselijk bestaan berusten. Hoofdstuk 3 Fenomenologie van de verveling Een tweede vraag naar de methode Eerst vanuit een meer radicale bezinning op de ‘con- stellatie van zijn en mens’ (ID, 21), kan de verveling niet alleen existentiaal, als grondstemming, maar ook epochaal, dat wil zeggen: als de ‘huidige’ zijnshistorische grondbestemming, worden opgehelderd. 1. Wetenschap, antropologie en Daseinsanalytiek Steeds wordt de theorievorming geleid door een bepaald mensbeeld. De gedragswetenschappen steunen op het beeld van de mens als een stimuli verwerkend wezen, de biologisch georiënteerde menswetenschappen zijn gefixeerd op processen van groei en verval, de neurofysiologie op hormonale secretie en stoornissen in de mono-aminen huishouding, in de existentiële psychologie wordt de mens geponeerd als een ‘zin-zoekend’ wezen. De portrettengalerij kan naar believen worden uitgebreid... Heidegger keert zich tegen elk bepalend denken omtrent de mens. In het bepalende denken, waartoe de metafysica en haar laatste gedaante: de antropologie, maar ook de op de metafysica voortbouwende wetenschappen behoren, verschijnt de mens uitsluitend als object van onderzoek. Maar wie de mens als object wil onderzoeken moet vroeg opstaan; en zal daarbij aan den lijve ondervinden, dat hetgeen onderzocht wordt, even vroeg is opgestaan. Heidegger: ‘Das Dasein ist keine Sache wie ein Stück Holz; nicht so etwas wie eine Pflanze; es besteht auch nicht aus Erlebnissen, noch weniger ist es das Subjekt (Ich) gegenüber dem Objekt (nicht Ich) (GA 63, 47).Das Dasein ist keine Sache wie ein Stück Holz; nicht so etwas wie eine Pflanze; es besteht auch nicht aus Erlebnissen, noch weniger ist es das Subjekt (Ich) gegenüber dem Objekt (nicht Ich) (GA 63, 47).’ Alle wetenschappelijke en antropologische bepalingen van de mens zijn ‘beslissingen’ vanuit het bestaan zelf. Een werkelijk radicale opgave van het denken is daarom, de mogelijkheidsvoorwaarde van al die verschillende ontwerpen of mensbeelden als zodanig te thematiseren. 2. Het op gang brengen van de zijnsvraag Sinds Plato en Aristoteles wordt onderscheid gemaakt tussen het substantiele en het schijnbare zijn. Daarna allerlei hoogste zijnden: de Idee van het Goede bij Plato, Aristoteles’ Eerste Onbewogen Beweger, God als ens realissimum in de scholastieke filosofie, Descartes’ cogito, Hegels Absolute Geest, Schopenhauers Wil en - volgens Heidegger - ook Nietzsches Wil tot Macht. H stelt voor dat het zijn niet als substantief, maar werkwoordelijk wordt opgevat, als het veelvoudig gebeuren van het zijnde. 'Het kan wezen', peinst een Zeeuwse boer, niet wetende dat hij met deze verzuchting inzake het wedervaren van de uienoogst vijfentwintig eeuwen zijnsvergetelheid verwoordt. H zelfbewustzijn als het verstaan van zijn als Dasein. Openheid voor de wereld als een combinatie van verborgenheid en overborgenheid: De landmeter ziet de schoonheid van het landschap niet, noch de groei van de gewassen; de schilder ziet geen afmetingen, maar perspectieven. Voor de boer liggen de schoonheid en de afmetingen van het landschap verborgen in het toegewijd cultiveren van zijn akker. Deze ontslotenheid van het tegelijkertijd verborgen en onverborgen zijn van wereld is de wijze waarop het Dasein is. Primair is niet de configuratie van subject en object, maar de fenomenale eenheid van Dasein en wereld. Telkens verstaat het Dasein de wereld vanuit een bepaalde intentie of belang, vanuit een bepaalde gezichtshoek en vanuit een bepaalde begrippelijkheid. Een volstrekt belangeloze, perspectiefloze, begripsneutrale optiek bestaat eenvoudig niet. 4. Fenomenologie van de gestemdheid Met het formeel-aanwijzende begrip ‘bevinding’ brengt Heidegger een fenomeen op ontologische noemer dat ons in het alledaagse bestaan vertrouwd is als gestemdheid. Onze ontmoeting met de wereld geschiedt altijd in en vanuit een bepaalde stemming. In de zwaarmoedigheid verschijnt de wereld als een plaats waar het moeizaam toeven is: een tranendal, in de uitgelatenheid is de wereld vol van verlokkingen, in het geluk straalt de wereld van verwezenlijkte mogelijkheden, in de vertwijfeling raakt alles aan het wankelen. NB niet een identificatie van stemmingen met gevoelens en driften. Het is de melodie die de toon aangeeft van het Dasein. De gestemdheid gaat aan ons denken, voelen en handelen ‘vooraf’. 5. Het methodisch belang van de stemming De fixatie op kennis en, meer precies, op de waarneming als bron van kennis (SuZ, 170) heeft ons op eigenaardige, zo niet navrante wijze ‘blind’ gemaakt voor de omstandigheid, dat de wereld primair in de gestemheid ontsloten wordt. Opmerkelijker is, dat Heidegger Dilthey niet noemt als wegbereider van zijn existentiale analytiek van de gestemdheid. Ook Nietzsches 'Hinter jedem Gedanken steckt ein Affekt' blijft in eerste instantie ook nog onvermeld bij H.: ‘Philosophie geschieht je in einer Grundstimmung. Philosophisches Begreifen gründet in einer Ergriffenheit und diese in einer Grundstimmung.’ 6. De dictatuur van (het) Men Het Dasein, dat mogelijkheid is, verstaat zich gewoonlijk als een zijnde dat slechts - bepaalde - mogelijkheden heeft. Deze intuïtie omtrent de neiging tot een verzaken van de ontologische dimensie van het Dasein ten gunste van de ontische dimensie, draagt het hele project van Sein und Zeit. Het Dasein is zichzelf ontisch het meest nabij - als ‘vader van twee kinderen’, of als ‘schrijver van een onleesbaar boek’ - maar ontologisch - als ‘geworpen ontwerp’ - blijft het ver van zichzelf verwijderd (SuZ,15). Drie existentiale structuren tekenen de verlorenheid van het Dasein in de vervallenheid: gepraat, nieuwsgierigheid en ambiguiteit. Dit gepraat beperkt zich zeker niet tot ‘het volk’ - over niets en nog wat zwetsende vrouwen met tassen vol prei in Lijn 9. Ook de NRCHandelsblad lezende ‘abonnees’ op Le Monde, net terug uit de Malediven waar ze het ongeschreven werk van Derrida hebben gelezen en nu gehaast op weg zijn naar een expositie waar ‘men niet aan voorbij mag gaan’, bewegen zich (waarschijnlijk) in het Men. Wel verandert in de eigenlijkheid de verhouding van het Dasein tot het zijnde en tot het eigen zijn. En wanneer Heidegger schrijft dat wij de oneigenlijkheid ‘slechts voor een ogenblik’ te boven kunnen komen (SuZ, 371), moet worden bedacht dat een ‘ogenblik’ een fenomeen is, dat existentiaal beschouwd, niet noodzakelijk een ‘korte spanne tijds’ is, maar juist niet (meer) in termen van tijdsmeting gedacht kan worden. Op deze ogenschijnlijk ‘blinde vlek’ in het ‘project’ Sein und Zeit wordt in het laatste hoofdstuk nog uitvoerig ingegaan. 7. Het belang van angst 'wovor die Angst sich ängstet, ist das In-der-Welt-sein selbst' (SuZ, 187). In het ‘Sein-zum-Tode’, dat zou kunnen worden geduid als een volstrekt geseculariseerd memento mori, is het Dasein ‘inlopend’ op de dood, deze uiterste mogelijkheid existerend indachtig. 8. Moment van bezinning inzet van Sein und Zeit worden verwezenlijkt: de opheldering van de samenhang van Dasein en tijdelijkheid, ter voorbereiding van de vraag naar de samenhang van zijn en tijd (SuZ, 436). Wanneer de angst het Niets openbaart, treedt de oorspronkelijke openheid van het zijnde als zodanig aan de dag: het blijkt, dat (het) zijnde is, en niet Niets (GA 9, 114). Met enige schroom - het voltallig ledenbestand van het Thomas Aquino-gezelschap buitelde bij gelegenheid over mij heen - wil ik hier de stelling voorleggen dat de angst bij Heidegger op eigenaardige wijze als een filosofische deugd fungeert. kritiek van verschillende filosofen op de grote rol die de angst speelt in H's benadering - andere voorstellen (..) 9. Intermezzo: de verveling vanuit Sein und Zeit doordacht Is de verveling niet een keerzijde, een eigenaardig ‘opbreken’ van het Men en van de ‘tijdelijkheid’ waarin Men meent voort te moeten snellen? Is de verveling niet een onaangename gast die Men in de alledaagsheid buiten de deur tracht te houden? Is de verveling niet een - onderdrukte - stemming? ‘Die tiefe Langeweile, in den Abgründen des Daseins wie ein schweigender Nebel hin- und herziehend, rückt alle Dinge, Menschen und einen selbst mit ihnen in eine merkwürdige Gleichgültigkeit zusammen. Diese Langeweile offenbart das Seiende im Ganzen (GA 9, 110).’ De verveling en de vreugde ‘ontberen’ echter de ontologische zeggingskracht van de angst; deze 'ausgezeichnete Befindlichkeit'. 10. Fenomenologie van de verveling 1929 Heidegger’s collegecyclus Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik Opmerkelijk genoeg wordt in dit college geen woord gewijd aan de angst. De grondstemming die in deze collegecyclus centraal staat is de verveling. Heidegger beproeft in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik een radicale uitwerking van het inzicht uit Sein und Zeit dat de existentiale analytiek uit het concrete bestaan oprijst en daarop terugslaat. Opmerkelijk genoeg, en in directe tegenspraak met het in Sein und Zeit inzake het ‘Men’ gezegde, roept Heidegger op de ambiguïteit (‘Zweideutigkeit’) van het filosoferen te omarmen, zowel de ambiguïteit van het filosoferen als zodanig, als de ambiguïteit van 'unseres Philosophierens, hier und jetzt' (GA 29/30, 20). De filosofie is alles behalve een ‘gerust’- of ‘zekerstellen’; zij is 'der Wirbel, in den der Mensch hereingewirbelt wird, um so allein ohne Phantastik das Dasein zu begreifen'. ‘Diese oberflächige Langeweile soll uns gar in die tiefe Langeweile bringen, bzw., angemessener gesprochen, die oberflächige soll sich als die tiefe Langeweile offenbaren, uns im Grunde des Daseins durchstimmen. Diese flüchtige, bei-läufige, unwesentliche Langeweile soll wesentlich werden (GA 29/30, 122).’ In Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik geeft Heidegger de alledaagse verveling de ruimte, tracht hij deze zich te laten uitspreken. Bovendien gaat het erom, de verveling niet te beschouwen, maar in ervaring te brengen hoe de verveling zich voltrekt (GA 29/30, 135). Er bestaan geen vervelende dingen. Zelfs de meest oppervlakkige verveling heeft betrekking op ons zelf, als Dasein. (..) Juist in de fixatie op de tijd als iets dat verdreven moet worden, in het rusteloos zoeken naar afleiding ‘breekt’ de tijd in eigenaardige zin op, en wel als dat wat zich niet laat ‘verdrijven’. In het verdrijven van de tijd toont de tijd haar (over)macht. De tijd staat ons niet ter beschikking. Een nog meer nadrukkelijke betrekking tot onszelf als Dasein voltrekt zich in de verveling van het ‘tijdverdrijf’. Wanneer wij ‘de tijd nemen’ brengen wij de tijd tot stilstand. De tijd verwordt in het tijdverdrijf tot een langgerekt nu (‘gedehntes Jetzt’), zonder enige uitstraling naar verleden en toekomst (GA 29/30, 186). Wij hebben ons bestaan niet aangegrepen, maar uit handen gegeven. De diepe verveling is de meest ‘afgrondelijke’ gedaante van de verveling als stemming (GA 29/30, 209). Maar de ‘diepte’ van de diepe verveling is niet het meest fundamentele, maar eerder, of zelfs omgekeerd, het bodemloze van de menselijke existentie, die geen nadere bepaling toelaat (GA 29/30, 239). 11. Verveling en angst In Was ist Metaphysik? wijst Heidegger op een fundamenteel verschil tussen angst en verveling. De verveling onthult weliswaar het zijnde in het geheel, maar zij verbergt daarbij het Niets. Dit wordt bevestigd in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. De angst onthult het Niets, de verveling toont de Leegte. Wordt de angst eigenlijk verstaan in het ‘Sein-zum-Tode’, inzake de diepe verveling zou parerend en bepaald inspirerend van een 'Sein-zur-Welt' kunnen worden gesproken. Eerst in de diepe verveling wordt de mogelijkheid die het Dasein is, niet vanuit de sterfelijkheid gedacht, maar nadrukkelijk vanuit de tijdelijkheid van het Dasein. 12. Impasse en verstilling In de impasse van de diepe verveling is het bestaan verworden tot een inhoudsloze duur zonder wording. In de diepe verveling is de tijd dermate in wanorde geraakt dat elke geleding, elk ritme en elk tempo verdwenen zijn. Wat rest is 'een woestijn van tijd, schrikbarend en verpletterend als de eeuwigheid', zoals Kundera het uitdrukt. Laten wij nu eens kijken naar de mogelijkheid van een ‘omslag’, van een ‘meta-fysica’, die Heidegger in de diepe verveling ontwaart; de ‘aanzegging’ die zou schuilgaan in de impasse van de totale ‘ontzegging’ van zijn en tijd. Deze aanzegging zou zich eerst manifesteren in de afgrondelijkheid van de doorstane diepe verveling. Voor Heidegger is de sleutel van de omslag de tijd zelf. De tijd is de oorzaak van de verveling: 'Die Zeit ist das, was in dieser Langeweile das Dasein in ihren Bann schlägt' (GA 29/30, 223). De ‘roep’ van de diepe verveling betreft het Dasein als mogelijkheid: '[D]ieses Ansagen im Versagen ist ein Anrufen das eigentliche Ermöglichende des Daseins in mir.' (GA 29/30, 216). 13. De verveling als grondstemming van een tijdperk ‘Das Geheimnis fehlt in unserem Dasein, und damit bleibt der innere Schrecken aus, das jedes Geheimnis bei sich trägt und der dem Dasein seine Größe gibt. Das ausbleiben der Bedrängnis ist das im Grunde Bedrängende und zutiefst Leerlassende, d.h., die im Grunde langweilende Leere (GA 29/30, 244).’ De onderdrukking van de verveling en het uitblijven van het geheim vormen niet een ‘probleem’ dat kan worden ‘opgelost’; het probleem is, dat de verveling niet wordt onderkend, niet wordt doorstaan. Een beslissende stap - ook binnen de filosofie - is daarom de verveling te doordenken als epochale bestemming, als grondstemming van het huidige ‘zijnsperk’. Hieraan is het nu volgende hoofdstuk gewijd. Hoofdstuk iv Stemming & Be-stemming: Nihilisme, techniek, verveling Een derde vraag naar de methode Met de aanscherping van de vraag naar de diepe verveling als grondstemming van het huidige tijdperk is niet minder dan de roemruchte ‘Ommekeer’ - de ‘Kehre’ - in Heideggers denken in het geding: de wending van een existentiaal naar een epochaal georiënteerd denken. 1. Het Dasein in de mens Heidegger slaagt er in Sein und Zeit niet werkelijk in duidelijk te maken hoe de ‘verhouding’ tussen Dasein en mens gedacht moet worden. ‘Das Da-sein steht in Sein und Zeit noch im Anschein des ‘Anthropologischen’ und ‘Subjektivistischen’ und ‘Individualistischen’, u.s.f., und doch ist von allem das Gegenteil im Blick (GA 65, 295).’ Niet voldoende kan worden benadrukt dat het Heidegger te doen is om dat wat niet inzake de mens kan worden bepaald, maar om wat zich aan de mens voltrekt: het Da-sein. ‘Dasein’ is het raadselachtige gebeuren van zijnsverstaan dat zich aan de mens voltrekt. Het Dasein kan daarom niet vanuit de mens worden begrepen. Sterker: het ‘Dasein’ voltrekt zich aan de mens als mogelijkheid. De ‘eindigheid van de mens’ moet in een meer afgrondelijke zin worden begrepen vanuit de tijdelijkheid van het zijn. Zoveel is evenwel zeker, dat de ‘Geschichtlichkeit’ in Sein und Zeit uitsluitend als een existentiale structuur gedacht wordt, waardoor de tijdelijkheid van het zijn zelf ongethematiseerd blijft. 2. De Ommekeer ‘in praktijk’: van stemming naar bestemming, van existentiale naar epochale analytiek De angst onthult het Dasein als ‘geworpen ontwerp’. In grondstemmingen als terughoudendheid (‘Verhaltenheit’) en schroom (‘Scheu’) verschijnt het Dasein als een ‘geschonken ontvangst’, 'der stete Empfänger der Gabe aus dem ‘Es gibt Anwesenheit’' (SD, 12-13). Op de meest ‘fundamentele’, dat wil zeggen, op de meest ‘afgrondelijke’ en onbepaalbare wijze voltrekt het zijn zich als ‘Schickung’. Een ‘Geschick’ is dan een ‘beschikking’, een bepaalde wijze waarop de schikking van (het) zijn zich epochaal voltrekt. Ontisch-existentieel wordt het ‘Geschick’ gewoonlijk - zij het in ontologische zin ‘ten onrechte’ - als ‘Schicksal’ gedacht en ervaren, als noodlot of fortuin. Verspreid over verschillende werken heeft Heidegger de zijnsgeschiedenis van de westerse metafysica doordacht en aangegeven hoe in verschillende epochale grondstemmingen het zijnde op onderscheiden wijze verschijnt en hoe ‘waarheid’ op wisselende wijze gedacht en ervaren is (WiPh, 37v.; GA 5, 83v.; GA 65, 327- 370, N II, 481-490). GR verwondering / verbijstering, waarhheid als onverborgenheid, a-letheia ME geloof, zijn als ens creatum, waarheid als openbaring MT (Moderne Tijd) vertrouwen, waarheid als zekerheid (alleen werkelijk wat voorstellend kan worden geobjectiveerd) PMT (Post MOderne Tijd): nog onduidelijke stemming: Zweifel und Verzweiflung auf der einen, blinde Besessenheit von ungeprüften Prinzipien auf der anderen Seite stehen gegeneinander. Furcht und Angst mischen sich mit Hoffnung und Zuversicht (WiPh, 42-43).’ 'Einblick nennt nicht unsere Einsicht, die wir in das Seiende nehmen' (GA 79, 75). Want ‘dat wat is’, is juist niet het zijnde, maar de voltrekking van zijn. De ‘Einblick’ is 'Einkehr des Blitzes der Wahrheit des Seins' (GA 79, 74). Als grondstemmingen van de voleinding van de metafysica noemt Heidegger de verbijstering (‘Er-schrecken’) omtrent de uitputting van de mogelijkheden van de metafysica, en het vermoeden (‘Er-ahnen’) van een mogelijke andere aanvang van het denken, dat wil zeggen van een denken voorbij de metafysica. 3. Nietzsche: het nihilisme als onaangenaamste aller gasten. Voor Nietzsche hangt het nihilisme samen met de toenemende ongeloofwaardigheid van het christendom en de daaraan ten grondslag liggende moraal (KSA 12, 125). De categorieën ‘doel’, ‘eenheid’, ‘zijn’, waarmee we een waarde in de wereld hebben gelegd, worden er door ons weer uitgehaald - en nu ziet de wereld er waarden-loos uit (KSA 13, 46). Dit laatste inzicht, dat het nihilisme een ‘gebeuren’ is, dat zich aan de hedendaagse mens voltrekt, draagt Heideggers ‘uiteenzetting’ met Nietzsche. Ook Heidegger meent dat het nihilisme zich als de geschiedenis van ons eigen tijdperk openbaart; het nihilisme is de wijze ‘waarop wij zijn’ (N II, 86). H: ‘Die Metaphysik ist der Geschichtsraum, worin zum Geschick wird, daß die übersinnliche Welt, die Ideen, Gott, das Sittengesetz, die Vernunftautorität, der Fortschritt, das Glück der Meisten, die Kultur der Zivilisation ihre bauende Kraft einbüßen und nichtig werden (GA 5, 221).’ N: dat er, bij ontstentenis van een hoogste zijnde, een uiteindelijke zin of doeleinde, alleen nog de loutere zelfbevestiging van het zijnde en niets dan het zijnde rest (GA 5, 220v.). De 'Überwindung der Metaphysik' ligt voor Nietzsche in het onvoorwaardelijk beamen van de wereld als eeuwige wederkeer van het zijnde in een actief nihilisme, in een onvoorwaardelijk 'Bejahen des Lebens', waarvan de ‘hogere mens’ vertwijfeld getuigt en waartoe eerst de sterke mens en de 'Übermensch' in staat zijn. H: Het idioom van het ‘worden’ blijft geënt op (levens)processen en omgeven door een 'Nebel des Biologismus' (GA 47, 60-77). Ook de herwaardering van alle waarden, de 'Umwertung aller Werte' waarbij de waarden worden herleid tot de Wil tot Macht, blijft een oriëntatie op waarden en daarmee schatplichtig aan de metafysica (N II, 342). 4. Nihilisme en techniek wil tot willen manifesteert zich - kort en bondig - als techniek. In de moderne techniek voltrekt zich volgens Heidegger 'die ständig rotierende Wiederkehr des Gleichen' (GA 8, 112). Het enige dat er nog gebeurt is het einde-loos, zin- en doelloos rondzingen van het zijnde en niets dan het zijnde. Techniek is nihilisme ‘in praktijk’ (VA, 80). 4.1 Heideggers vraag naar de techniek Heidegger betracht een volhardend vragen naar de techniek, dat er niet op uit is een (waarde)oordeel uit te spreken over de techniek en evenmin tracht ‘oplossingen’ aan te bieden. Hoewel zijn idioom hier en daar anders doet vermoeden, tracht hij slechts te beschrijven, of beter: vragend te doordenken, of nog beter: datgene indachtig te zijn, wat zich zijnshistorisch aan de hedendaagse mens voltrekt. De opvatting van techniek als middel tot een doel voert Heidegger terug tot Aristoteles’ leer van de viervoudige oorzaak. Hij beschrijft hoe volgens Aristoteles een zilveren offerschaal zijn bestaan dankt aan de configuratie van materiële oorzaak (het zilver), formele oorzaak (de vorm van de schaal), finale oorzaak (de rituele offerdienst) en werkoorzaak (de zilversmid). De boer en de molenaar maken weliswaar gebruik van het land en het water, maar zij doen dit door zich te voegen in het krachtenspel van de natuur; zij koesteren de krachten van de aarde en van het water. Van heel andere aard is het dwingende, ‘opvorderende’ ontbergen dat in de moderne techniek heerst. In het dwingend ontbergen worden de verborgen krachten van de natuur niet gebruikt, maar opgeëist. In het dwingend ontbergen wordt alles, de natuur, de dingen en de mensen, beschikbaar gemaakt of in elk geval als beschikbaar bestand beschouwd. Wat telt, is niet het gebruiken van wat nodig is, maar het beheersen van wat is opgeëist. Beslissend zijn: optimalisering, berekenbaarheid, beheersbaarheid en maakbaarheid, of dit nu de omgang met de dingen betreft, met de natuur, het onderwijs, de wetenschap, of de politiek. Ondanks de alom vigerende waarschuwende geluiden over onbepaalbaarheid, onberekenbaarheid, contingentie en onvoorspelbaarheid, toont zich ‘in praktijk’ een persisterend streven naar beheersing, variërend van milieu-technologie tot genetische manipulatie. In de zijnsverlatenheid van de planetair heersende techniek heerst een algehele gelijkvormigheid en onverschilligheid. De vraag dient zich aan naar de samenhang van techniek en verveling. 5. Nihilisme, Techniek, Verveling 5.1 Van angst naar verveling De horror metaphysicus is omgeslagen in taedium metaphysicum. Wij zijn verveeld geraakt met de ‘Grote Verhalen’, met al die achtereenvolgens ineengestorte kaartenhuizen, met al die ‘reisgidsen voor angstige mensen’, zoals Freud de grote filosofische systemen aanduidde. Niet langer de angst, de grondstemming van het tijdperk van het doorbrekende nihilisme, maar de verveling, de grondstemming van het al maar voortdurende nihilisme is de ‘toestand’ waarin wij ons bevinden. Opmerkelijk genoeg concludeert Boomkens in De angstmachine, na een uitgebreide analyse van de fascinatie voor angst en geweld in de hedendaagse cultuur - horrorfilms, boeken als American Psycho en de meest gewelddadige computergames -, dat aan deze fascinatie uiteindelijk de verveling ten grondslag ligt. 5.2 Verveling als grondbestemming H: ‘Das Geheimnis fehlt in unserem Dasein, und damit bleibt der innere Schrecken aus, den jedes Geheimnis bei sich trägt und der dem Dasein seine Größe gibt. Das Ausbleiben der Bedrängnis ist das im Grunde Bedrängende und zutiefst Leerlassende, d.h. die im Grunde langweilende Leere (GA 29/30, 244).’ ‘Der Mensch vermag von sich aus und allein mit seiner freien Zeit nichts mehr anzufangen. (..) Er muß die lange Zeit vertreiben, indem er sie verkürzt durch Kurzweil. Das Kurzweilige soll die Langeweile beseitigen oder sie wenigstens überdecken und vergessen lassen (GA 16, 579).’ Maar juist in deze verstrooiende vlucht naar ‘het interessante’ blijft het inter-esse - het werkelijk ‘zijn temidden van het zijnde’ - uit. 6. De onmacht tot ‘Dasein’ In de Beiträge zur Philosophie schetst Heidegger een aantal fenomenen waarin de zijnsverlatenheid zich aandient; in machinatie [maakbaarheid] (‘Machenschaft’), in het reusachtige (‘das Riesenhafte’), in snelheid en versnelling (‘Schnelligkeit’), en in de verwording van de ervaring tot beleving en ontluistering (‘Erlebnis’) (GA 65, 109v.). 6.2 Het reusachtige en de verveling Het reusachtige vloeit voort uit de machinatie, waarvoor immers geen berg te hoog is en geen brug te ver gaat. Het reusachtige toont zich vanzelfsprekend in de skylines van de metropolen, in de enorme winkelcentra en in de massale sport- en muziek-‘paleizen’, maar bijvoorbeeld ook in de explosieve uitbreiding van de museale ruimte, waarnaar elk museum meent te moeten streven. Ook elk festival of spektakel moet elk jaar groter worden. Stefan Zweig voorzag dit al in de eerste helft van de twintigste eeuw in zijn essay 'Monotonisierung der Welt'. Ritzer beschrijft het in The McDonaldisation of Society (..) McEvilly heeft in een hiermee samenhangend verband het ‘cocacolonialisme’ aan de orde gesteld, (..) 6.3 Versnelling en verveling versnelling, van fysieke mobiliteit en van informatie- en communicatiestromen. getuigen van een onvermogen tot rust en ‘oponthoud’ (‘Aufenthaltlosigkeit’). Heidegger - dit haastig opheffen van alle afstanden brengt geen nabijheid (VA, 163). Ook voor Sloterdijk is ‘snelheid’ een sleutelbegrip om de huidige tijd te duiden. Wij leven in een 'tachocratie'. De nieuwe machthebber is: snelheid. 6.4 Beleving en verveling De machinatie, het reusachtige en de versnelling leiden tot de verwording van de ervaring tot ‘beleving’. De verwondering is verworden tot een rusteloze nieuwsgierigheid (GA 45, 180). De traditionele industriële economie is naar een diensten-economie geëvolueerd die nu overgaat in de ‘belevenis-economie’. 6.5 Hoe de eersten de laatsten zijn geworden Finkielkraut heeft in De ondergang van het denken een navrant beeld geschetst: 'Het postmodernisme vervangt het exclusivisme van vroeger door eclecticisme. De postmodernist combineert naar believen de meest uiteenlopende bevliegingen en de meest tegenstrijdige ingevingen.' Meer dan een enkeling heeft de huidige, louter esthetisch levende mens in verband gebracht met de ‘laatste mens’ die Nietzsche in Aldus sprak Zarathoestra als ‘de verachtelijkste mens’ ten tonele voert. Deze ‘langstlevende’ mens, die lacht om de grote vragen waarop hij welgemoed elk antwoord schuldig kan blijven; de laatste mens die alles klein maakt, die ogenschijnlijk alles ironiserende mens die knipoogt omdat zijn oppervlakkige bestaan hem het geluk heeft gebracht - zijn pretje voor de dag en zijn pretje voor de nacht; en veel gif ten slotte om zacht te sterven - is de mens die in het eindeloos en zo maar verder van de voltooiing van de metafysica leeft, in een onvoltooid, zwak en passief nihilisme. Sloterdijk, in het Kristalpaleis: 'Op de eerste etage stappen degenen in en uit die er in geslaagd zijn de droom van een prestatieloos inkomen geheel of gedeeltelijk te realiseren; op de tweede huist een publiek van ontspannen burgers die profiteren van politieke zekerheid zonder er zelf voor te willen vechten; op de derde komen diegenen elkaar tegen die van de algemene immuniteitsvoorzieningen gebruik maken, zonder over een eigen lijdensgeschiedenis te beschikken; op de vierde bevinden zich de consumenten van een kennis waarvoor geen ervaring vereist is; op de vijfde lopen degenen rond die er door het onverbloemd openbaar maken van hun persoon in geslaagd zijn beroemd te worden, zonder op een prestatie te kunnen bogen of een werk te publiceren'. 'De grootste uitdaging van onze tijd is het vinden van een alternatieve vorm van verspilling die niet leidt tot verwoesting van de aarde', ‘n zoektocht naar andere (solaire en regeneratieve) energiebronnen die het leven in het Kristalpaleis zullen modificeren, bijvoorbeeld door een revitalisering van regionale economieën. 7. Methodische dilemma’s Wat is het dan wel wat Heidegger ‘doet’? Heideggers verzekering dat 'Das Sichverständlichmachen der Selbstmord der Philosophie [ist]' (GA 65, 435) belooft op het eerste gezicht weinig goeds. Dat de wetenschap niet denkt betekent dat de wetenschap het zijnde en niets dan het zijnde ziet en geen ‘oog’ heeft voor het gebeuren van het zijnde. Wetenschap, cultuurfilosofie, maar ook wereldbeschouwingen horen thuis in het voorstellende denken. Dit voorstellende denken kan nooit meer dan ‘juist’ zijn, aangezien het zich louter naar de ‘feiten’ richt en nooit verder komt dan een ‘optelling van symptomen’ (TK, 46). Filosofie is [voor Heidegger] noch wetenschap, noch wereldbeschouwing; een voortdurende onzekerheid beheerst haar. Daarom is de 'Einblick in das was ist' geen diagnostiek (GA 79, 74 v.) en de ‘Ahnung’ geen prognostiek (GA 65, 22). Een venijnige kritiek - de onwelwillende lezer is nog steeds aan het woord - zou kunnen luiden, dat Heidegger met zijn denken van de ‘Lichtung’, een cruciaal begrip in zowel het vroege als het latere werk, waarmee het ondefinieerbare en onpeilbare 'oplichten van het zijnde' wordt aangeduid, uiteindelijk één grote ‘oplichterij’ de filosofenwereld in heeft geholpen. Dat is in elk geval de mening van Philipse. Hoofdstuk v Na de methode: onderweg naar de dingen In de maalstroom van productie en consumptie, beschikkend over van alles ‘en nog wat’, beklemt de vraag of er eigenlijk iets is dat ons in deze ‘overvolle leegte’ nog werkelijk raakt. Deze wijzing op de oorspronkelijke mogelijkheid van ‘Da-sein’ is als 'verstilling' aangeduid. In dit hoofdstuk wordt deze verstilling niet existentiaal, maar zijnshistorisch doordacht. De verstilling waar het van nu af om gaat biedt geen verademing, geen aangename rust; zij behelst eerder een eigenaardige bevreemding, teweeg gebracht door een opschorting van het al te vanzelfsprekende: de manipuleerbaarheid van het zijnde. Het gaat om het teweegbrengen van een ontvankelijkheid; een ontvankelijkheid voor een omslag in de grondstemming. Daarvoor is geen program of aanwijsbaar doel. Wat de ‘weinige enkelen’, de ‘talrijke verbondenen’ en de ‘vele op elkander aangewezenen’ verbindt, is de bereidheid tot een oefening in vragen en een ontvankelijkheid voor dat, wat ‘wellicht komt’. 1. Denken in de ‘tussentijd’ In het voorgaande hoofdstuk zijn de grondstemmingen geschetst die de huidige tijd (be)stemmen: de grondstemming van het vaste vertrouwen die de nog steeds persisterende moderniteit beheerst, de ondergang van het vaste vertrouwen in de angst als grondstemming van het doorbrekende nihilisme, en de verveling als grondstemming van het al maar voortdurende nihilisme. grondstemmingen van de ‘toekomstigen’. H. viseert een configuratie van grondstemmingen: verbijstering (‘Erschrecken’), vermoeden (‘Er-ahnen’), ingetogenheid (‘Verhaltenheit’) en schroom (‘Scheu’), een verwondering (‘Erstaunen’) voorbij de nieuwsgierigheid, lankmoedigheid (‘Langmut’), ‘gelatenheid’ (een gelijktijdig ‘ja’ en ‘nee’ tegen de techniek, een hoogste vorm van zorgzaamheid). 2. Heidegger en de vraag naar de dingen De vraag naar het ding is in zekere zin verwant aan de vraag naar het zijn. Niet alleen de vraag naar het zijn, ook de vraag naar het ding als ding leidt ons mogelijk voorbij de metafysica en haar zucht naar het ‘Unbedingte’: het absolute, tijdloze, onvoorwaardelijke. 3. De ‘verwaarlozing’ van de dingen Er bestaat een meer merkwaardige samenhang tussen wetenschap, techniek en minachting voor de dingen, dat de dingen uitsluitend gelden en verschijnen als ‘bestand’, als object van onderzoek, van bezit, van gebruik en verbruik. 4. Het ‘eigenlijke’ schandaal van de filosofie Plato’s onderschikking van de concrete dingen aan de ideële gedaante daarvan, Aristoteles ‘constructie’ van dingen als configuratie van stof en vorm, het primaat van de essentie op de existentie in de scholastieke filosofie, de reductie van dingen tot ‘bronnen van gewaarwording’ of ‘dragers van eigenschappen’ in nominalisme en empirisme, Descartes’ alles nivellerende duiding van de dingen als res extensa; het zijn slechts enkele voorbeelden van de onmacht van de westerse filosofie de dingen als dingen te denken (VA, 166). Husserl laat het zijn (van de dingen) opgaan in het bewustzijn. In meer algemene zin fungeert het begrip ‘ding’ in de twintigste eeuw overwegend als een pejoratief begrip. Het wordt geassocieerd met de objecten van de wetenschap en met technische apparaten en consumptiegoederen. 5. Onderweg naar de dingen: filosofie en kunst Een nadenkende inkeer kan in het tweegesprek van filosofie en kunst plaatsvinden, mits de filosofie haar metafysische pretenties loslaat en de kunst niet langer als het domein van de esthetiek wordt opgevat. Zo zouden kunstwerken een ontvankelijkheid teweeg kunnen brengen voor de zelfstandigheid van alle dingen. Heidegger wijst op de eigenaardige tussenpositie die het kunstwerk inneemt ten opzichte van het terhanden gerei en het voorhanden object: het kunstwerk is, net als het werktuig, gemaakt, maar het gaat niet op in het gebruik. Voor het kind zijn de dingen (nog) geen objecten, geen ‘Gegenstände’, zoals voor volwassenen, het zijn ‘medestanders’, die in allerlei wisselende allianties het alledaags bestaan vervullen. 6. Naar een ‘gedenken’ van de dingen 'Im Denken wird jeglich Ding einsam und langsam', Im Dichten des Dichters und im Denken des Denkers wird immer soviel Weltraum ausgespart, daß darin ein jeglich Ding, ein Baum, ein Berg, ein Haus, ein Vogelruf die Gleichgültigkeit und Gewöhnlichkeit ganz verliert (EM, 20). Viervoud van aarde en hemel, goddelijken en stervelingen. De aarde is de bouwend dragende, de voedend vrucht-barende, die zorgt voor de wateren, het gesteente, gewas en het gedierte. De hemel is de gang van de zon, de loop van de maan, de schittering van de sterren, de jaargetijden, licht en schemering van de dag, duisternis en helderheid van de nacht. De goddelijken zijn de wenkende boden van de Godheid. De stervelingen ten slotte, zijn de mensen in zoverre zij de dood ‘vermogen’, dat wil zeggen tot de dood als dood in staat zijn. Aarde en hemel, goddelijken en stervelingen horen in het spiegelspel van het viervoud bijeen. 7. De vraag naar een ‘eigenlijke’ alledaagsheid Er lijkt een direct verband te bestaan tussen minachting voor de alledaagsheid en de primaatstelling van de metafysica. Al in het vroege werk heeft Heidegger de verzaking van het concrete, alledaagse bestaan ten gunste van de ‘theoretische’ blik in de westerse filosofie aan de orde gesteld. Het is de filosofie niet te doen om de sprong naar de reddende kust van begrippen, maar om de sprong in de drijvende boot van het concrete bestaan (GA 61, 37). H is echter ambivalent: Keer op keer distantieert hij zich van de naïviteit van het ‘gesunde Menschenverstand’ (GA 9, 177; GA 45, 215), van de ‘Alltagsmaßstäben’ (EM, 9) In de alledaagsheid ‘slapen’ de ‘grondverhoudingen’ tot het zijnde (GA 29/30, 398) Heidegger onderscheidt twee gedaanten van de ‘lange tijd’: de tijd van de oneigenlijke alledaagsheid, die voortdurend verkort moet worden met tijdverdrijf en met allelerlei verstrooiingen die ons uiteindelijk niet vervullen, en een andere tijd, een tijd aan gene zijde van oppervlakkige verveling en tijdverdrijf, een tijd die niet verdreven of genomen wordt, maar wachtend wordt doorstaan. In het verwijlen heerst een werkelijke verwondering waarin het gewone tot het ongewoonste wordt: 'Für das Er-staunen wird das Allergewönlichste von Allem und in Allem, überhaupt und irgendwie zu sein, zum Ungewöhnlichsten.' (GA 45, 166 v.). De alledaagsheid hoeft niet oneigenlijk te zijn, zij kan - ik herhaal - een werkelijke verblijfplaats worden (VA, 259). H: dit ongewone is niet het spectaculaire: 'Das Ungewöhnliche meint hier also nicht das Ausgefallene, die Sensation, das Nochniedagewesene, sondern im Gegenteil: Das Ungewöhnliche ist das ständig Wesende, Einfache und Eigene des Seienden' (GA 52, 66). En hij besluit in de geest van het college over Herakleitos: 'Im Gewöhnlichen kann daher das Ungewöhnliche am reinsten erscheinen' (GA 52, 66). 8. Hoe dichterlijk te wonen? 'Überstehen ist alles'. Geduld is alles. De Dijn merkt op: 'Het komt er op aan het alledaagse zo te beleven dat er ruimte is voor het oplichten van het mysterie. Krijgt in deze tempo giusto van de ‘Slow’-beweging de ‘euchronie’, de goede tijd waarvan Jankélévitch spreekt, gestalte? Ik vrees van niet. Het is immers de vraag of genoemde ‘initiatieven’ uiteindelijk meer zijn dan een tegenbeweging (slow versus fast food) en zelfs of zij niet op eigenaardige wijze bevangen blijven door het rekenende denken. Het aardigste van Slow is waarschijnlijk de recensie in Mail on Sunday, die ook op de achterflap van de Nederlandse vertaling is afgedrukt: 'Haast je naar de boekhandel!'. Hiermee valt naast de Slow-beweging ook het project van de ‘levenskunst’ onder verdenking. De verandering in de grondstemming kan ons alleen toevallen (G, 24). In 'Ashwednesday' schrijft T.S. Eliot: (..) Omdat deze vleugels geen vleugels meer zijn die dragen maar louter slagen in de lucht (..) leer ons bekommerd en onbekommerd zijn leer ons zitten, doodstil.108 'Teach us to care and not to care; teach us to sit still'. Dit is voor ons - hedendaagsen - het moeilijkste: stil te zitten. In het eigenlijke wachten zijn wij zuivere tegenwoordigheid (‘reinen Gegenwart’) (GA 77, 227), hetgeen heel iets anders is dan het ‘gedehntes Jetzt’ (GA 29/30, 186), het opgezwollen heden van de verveling. Wellicht is dit één van de ‘opdrachten’ en ‘uitdagingen’ waarvoor wij staan, maar die wij telkens weer hebben ontweken: de dingen als het om-gevende werkelijk te laten zijn, te verwijlen bij de dingen ‘zoals ze zijn’; er niet omheen te dromen zoals in zoveel eeuwen metafysica is gebeurd, noch de dingen te achtervolgen als voorwerpen die onze verwachtingsvolle dromen moeten vervullen. 9. De Januskop van de techniek: Ge-stell en Ereignis H heeft onvoldoende duidelijk gemaakt hoe het gelijktijdige ‘ja’ en ‘nee’ tot de techniek in ‘positieve zin’ gestalte kan krijgen. Heideggers ‘nee’ tegen de techniek betekent weliswaar geen ‘verloochening’ van de techniek, maar behelst toch vooral een op afstand houden daarvan. De werkelijke, zo niet epochale uitdaging ligt hierin: hoe de gelatenheid tot de dingen en de openheid voor het geheim ook in de techniek zelf gestalte kunnen krijgen. 10. Van ‘Realpolitik’ naar ‘Dingpolitik’? In 2005 organiseerden Bruno Latour en Peter Weibel in het Cenrum voor Kunst en Media in Karlsruhe de expositie Making Things Public. Atmosphären der Demokratie. Manifest waarin Latour oproept tot een ingrijpende transitie van de vigerende ‘Realpolitiek’ - de (geo)politiek van de ‘Machenschaft’ -, de machinatie, zoals gepraktiseerd in het Ge-stell, naar een meer ‘Dingpolitik’, een politiek waarin de dingen centraal staan. Dingpolitiek vereist niet het zelfgenoegzame ‘glasheldere’ ‘op de feiten gebaseerde’ vertoog van de professionele ‘volksvertegenwoordiger’, maar een ‘meer indirecte, verstoorde en onafgeronde vorm van eloquentie’. dat ‘dingpolitiek’ alleen kan plaatsvinden 'wanneer objecten dingen worden, dat wil zeggen wanneer feitelijke zaken ruimte maken voor hun ingewikkelde onderlinge relaties en zaken van zorg worden'. Zo heeft Robert Kagan gewezen op een fundamenteel verschil tussen Europese en Amerikaanse opvattingen van wat politiek is. Waar de Europeanen in hun ‘luchtbel van eeuwige vrede’ willen leven, moet dit worden gegarandeerd door de Real- politiek van de Verenigde Staten. Sloterdijk besluit met een pleidooi voor oefening in ponophilia: de liefde voor toewijding en inzet, uitgaande van isothenia: het besef van de mogelijke gelijkwaardigheid van uiteenlopende standpunten. (..) De ware lokaliteit verhoudt zich niet als een punt tot het vlak van de globaliteit, maar heeft daartoe een ‘asymmetrische’ verhouding’: 'De accentuering van het lokale onderstreept de autonomie van het in-zich-uitgebreide. lokaliteit waarin de logica van 'participatie, van het gesitueerd-zijn en van de inwoning heerst. Het wonen ontwikkelt een plaatsgebondenheid gedurende langere tijd. Onmiskenbaar beweegt Sloterdijk zich hier in de nabijheid van Heideggers latere werk. 'Politiek is de realisatie van een op zijn plaats belichaamde bereidheid om door middel van het uitgevochten verschil van meningen en hartstochten erkende problemen op te lossen en gevonden oplossingen aan hertoetsing te onderwerpen'. Beslissend is 'het eindige, concrete, ingebedde en voor overlevering geschikte bestaan. Het uitgebreid-zijn op de eigen plaats is de goede gewoonte om te zijn.’ Heideggers door Sloterdijk gewraakte provincialisme en wereldvreemdheid komen zo toch in een ander licht te staan. Slot: ‘Uit’ verveling? Ik sluit af met een eigen - meer bescheiden - visioen. Wanneer de Dingpolitiek ooit gestalte zal krijgen, doorheen de Realpolitik van het ‘Ge-stell’, dan denk ik - ik durf het bijna niet te zeggen - dat ik mij, al was het maar voor even en zo nu en dan, niet zal vervelen. Lezer, ik ga de politiek in; de Dingpolitiek wel te verstaan. U hoort nog van mij. Schuurman, J.G. e.a. Ambient Intelligence. Toekomst van de zorg of zorg van de toekomst? Rathenau studie 50, 2007 In deze samenvatting kort ik Ambient Intelligence ook steeds af als AmI. 22v AmI gaat uit van de NBIC convergentie (nanotechnologie, biotechnologie, ICT en cognitieve wetenschappen). AmI zou kunnen/moeten leiden tot personal healthcare, waarbij de mens omgeven is door intelligente technologie. In termen van toenemende functionaliteit omvat AmI de volgende technologische kenmerken:
32v Er zijn echter ook kritische vragen te stellen over de risico’s van mogelijke gevolgen de implementatie van AmI:
129 Door AmI mogelijk te versterken zorgtrends zijn:
De onderstaande technologische ontwikkelingen (2007-2022) – vormen de onderdelen van een routekaart van netwerkvorming (2007-2012), personalisatie (2012-2017) en genetwerkte personalisatie (2017-2022) met veranderingen in de technologie, de (aan te bieden) diensten en in de organisatie van de zorg:  OBW 2009 Elektronisch Patiënten Dossier (EPD) discussies. PD tot nu toe een hulpmiddel van de arts en andere hulpverleners met het oog op de continuïteit van de hulpverlening. Problemen bij bredere toegankelijkheid van een EPD: wat komt er dan niet meer in te staan (omdat de patiënt over de schouder mee mag gaan kijken), wat komt er wel in te staan en hoe (ivm objectiviteit en uitwisselbaarheid van de gegevens), hoe ‘t bewaken vd relatie vd dossier-inhoud en de actuele (mogelijk sterk gewijzigde) situatie van de patiënt, discrepantie tussen vastgelegde medicaties en medicijngedrag van de patiënt (vroegtijdig stoppen met medicatie, zelfmedicatie), ... >> vergelijkbare problemen met AmI voor zover dit zich richt op de gezondheid van de gebruiker. 2009 Als toepassing van AmI in de zorg zou leiden tot een grotere mate van zelfredzaamheid, dan zou dit ook een rol kunnen spelen bij een heroriëntatie van de levensloop-politiek, waarin tot nu toe sprake was van een opsplitsing in min of meer duidelijke fasen van kindertijd, adolescentie, scholing, opleiding, werk, gezinsvorming, zorg en (een steeds langere periode van) ouderdom. Met name in de laatste fases wordt een periode van overbelasting (werk, gezin, etc) gevolgd door een lange periode van onderbenutting (Frits de Lange, Trouw, 10.10.2009). cf Martha Riley: afscheid nemen van een samenleving die scholing, arbeid, zorg en vrije tijd als chronologisch opeenvolgende fasen in de levensloop organiseert en kiezen voor een maatschappij waarin deze levensdomeinen geen fasen maar dimensies geworden zijn. Levenslang leren, zorgen, werken en genieten van vrije tijd, wat door mensen zelf in een eigen mix gecombineerd en geïntegreerd wordt. Kirshner, D. & J.A. Whitson (ed), Situated cognition : social, semiotic, and psychological perspectives, 1997 2 We are engaged not just as individuals, but as socii. 3 Situated cognition investigates the fundamental processes of cognition as social and situated activity, processes that have been neglected in a traditional cognitive science that presumes cognition to be a matter of individuals acquiring ‘knowledge’ viewed as something more abstract and situation-independent. 4 Lave (1988) vs the functionalist belief in mind-body dualism. Ideas, beliefs and knowledge are not autonomous (disconnected from bodily (lived) experience and sociocultural context). Knowledge entails lived practices and not just accumulated information. cf the robust expertise that ordinary folks regularly display in ordinary situations. 5 Apprenticeship (reflecting modes of learning in everyday situations) does not result in inert knowledge, negative self-images and high failure rates that are characteristic of present schooling systems. Vygotsky cs: sociohistorical approach as contrast to the behaviorist focus on low-level behavioral responses on the one hand and Piagetian individualism on the other hand. In responsive teaching/learning, mutual appropriation is of central importance – also for acquiring new meanings and methods from the novice’s variations. Shift from the individual as unit af analysis towards the sociocultural setting in which activities are embedded. 6 Focus on structures and interrelations within activity systems, link the community of practice to broader categories of social and political analysis. Appropriation of knowledge within the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) – an interactive system within which people work on a problem which at least one of them could not alone work on effectively. Another approach: distinguishing arenas (e.g. supermarket as the product of patterns of capital formation and political economy) from settings (the repeatedly experienced, personally ordered and edited version of the arena, e.g. in one’s shopping activity) (Lave 1988 < Bourdieu, 1977, 1984). 7 intrinsic social nature of cognition and learning 8 inherent relationship between external and internal activity – a genetic relationship: how internal mental processes are created as a result of the child’s exposure to ‘mature cultural forms of behavior’ (Vygotsky). 9 Lemke (1995): ecosicial systems: not things or people, but processes and practices as the units of analysis. It is the processes/practices which are interdependent, linked, creating the emergent properties of the self-organizing systems (1995,47). 10 Thoughts are generally considered to be in the head, leading to the usual dualism of a world of mental representations separated from the real, outside-the-head world. Situated cognition: language as a multitude of distinct speech genres and semiotic devices. Pierce: we think in signs. Whitson: semiosis (activity of signs): the constituent sign elements are distributed in the world. 11 St Julien vs the traditional metaphor of information coursing through the brain – cognition occurs as patterns of activation in the brain, not as linear sequences. 12 situated cognition > new ideas about teaching and learning. 17ff Jean Lave, The Culture of Acquisition and the Practice of Understanding. 18 two theories of learning: ‘the culture of acquisition’ and ‘understanding in practice’ (eg apprenticeship). Assumptions last theory: learning and understanding are socially and culturally constituted and what is to be learned is integrally implicated in the forms in which it is appropriated. Knowing, thinking and understanding are generated in situations whose specific characteristics are part of the practice as it unfolds. 20 integral nature of relations between people acting (including thinking and learning) and the social world, and between the form and content of learning-in-practice. 32 everyday [educational] practices embody within themselves the fundamental notions of temporal, spatial and social ordering that underlie and organize the [socialcultural] system as a whole. 33 ‘Owning problems’ and ‘understanding’ are closely related in a conception in which learners appropriate knowledge into their improvised everyday practice. 37ff Jay L. Lemke, Cognition, Context and Learning: a Social Semiotic Perspective. vs cleaving body from mind and society from nature. 38 cognition now synonymous with meaningful activity – the whole interacting ‘ecology’, including body and brain and tools and environment. As we participate, we change. 39 semiosis as taking one thing as a sign for another, selective contextualization, 40 semiotic practices are also material and social, meaning-making processes are both natural and cultural (hybrid, Latour, 1993, Lemke, 1995). ecosystem as self-organizing system (Prigogine & Stengers, 1984). Lemke: ecosocial system (1995). You cannot analyze the behavior of an ecosocial system with just physics, chemistry and biology; you also need to take into account economics, politics and other sorts of cultural beliefs and values. 41 If we are made by our participation in networks of micro-ecologies of situated activities, the conditions of what we can become are determined by the global structure and dynamics of the ecosocial systems that these networks help constitute. Electrons, atoms do not develop/age. More complex systems have additional properties. Ecosocial systems have the most properties that matter, the most kinds of differences that make a difference. Ecosocial systems are also developmental and epigenetic systems.41 Tajectory of growth and development is not predictable [from the initial conditions], there is no master control program that determines the form of the patterns it achieves. 42 There are only regulating and constraining inputs to the total dynamics of the system. Semiosis (meaning-making) is not solely the province of human minds – all matter is capable of semiosis, provided that it is properly organized. 43 Community of Practice (CoP) – legitimate peripheral participant (LPP) – increasing participation. 46 vs rationalism: reasoning is an affective state or process – all cognition is affective – we do not think without feeling. 47 Our continuity lies not only in our body but also in the continuity of meaningful behavior of the social persona. 48 Meanings can also be seens and analyzed as functions of past participations in the culture of a community (cf Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’). 49 In order to understand the dynamics of ecosocial systems we must look at the networks of interdependencies among practices, acitivities and CoPs. Not only the context of the situation is relevant, but also the context of culture. 50 networks of connections among events, moments, practices, activities, communities of practice, historical periods, stages of life, texts etc. 51 Local 3D networks have also global 1D connections – 52 individual trajectories through networks also knit them together and open them up to change due to one another’s influence. We embody our past, as our environment embodies its (and so our collectie) past, and in our interaction not only memory but culture and historical and sociological processes are renewed and continued, diverted and changed. 57ff Valerie Walkerdine, Redefining the Subject in Situated Cognition Theory. 59 In Piagetian structuralism scientific and mathematical reasoning were understood as the pinnacle of an evolutionary process of adaptation. Vs Darwinian pessimism (competition, aggression, war) Piaget posed love, cooperation and reason as the natural order of things. 60 Enlightment invested a great deal in the production of reasoning beings. 61 Foucault understood the historical production of scientific knowledge as part of modern strategies of government. The subject is historically and socially produced in en through discourses and practices. 63 Also this way the children become ‘the child’ [to be educated in specific ways and contexts]. 64 School practices are analyzable in terms of their relations of signification and their functioning in terms of ‘truth effects’. 65 Situated cognition is not people thinking in different contexts, but subjects produced differently in different practices, in which certain transformations are necessary to turn, for example, nonschool mathematics into school mathematics practices. These transformations are in the relations of signification that produce different subject positions and different truth conditions. The concepts ‘more’ and ‘less’ are used differently in school compared to home practices. 67 Certain semiotic chains may so transform the relations of signification that a new fusion of signifier and signified is produced. 68 Discursive shifts produce the possibility of huge shifts of subjectification and the production of the man of reason. 71ff Philip E. Agre, Living Math: Lave and Walkerdine on the Meaning of Everyday Arithmetic. L&W see mathematics not as an abstract cognitive task, but as something deeply bound up in socially organized activities and systems of meaning. Lave vs math as ‘problem solving’ 73 not abstract knowledge but structured activity, knowledge understood relationally, as something located in the evolving relationships between people and the settings in which they conduct their activities, 74 and change over time through their interactions. 75 For Walkerdine the signifier [ Saussure’s signifié ] is not an abstract meaning [concept ], but rather a form of shared activity among a number of people. 76 A mathematical signifier such as ‘more’ can be embedded in wholly different signs in different settings. 77 Social institutions [supporting mathematics] encourage children in the idea that they can comprehend and control the world by encoding and manipulating it symbolically. 81 Lave’s negative assessment of congnitivism was both emperical (it fails to explain the phenomena) and ethical (it distracts people from the reality and causes them to discount their own abilities), Walkerdine’s negative assessment of school discourse is wholly ethical ( it marginalizes whole categories of students and it inculcates regrettable fantasies of control). 83ff David Kirshner, The Situated Development of Logic in Infancy: A Case Study. vs the Cartesian idea of the individual conceived as an autonomous intellectual entity. Jaynes (1976): We cannot be counscious of what we are not conscious of. It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it. 84 Computationalism is slicing through mind-matter-dichotomy, meaning with(out) homunculus and mentalism. Nativist position of Chomski and Fodor: language emerging as the child matures, contained with its genetic program. 85 Chomsky: the content structures of knowledge are inborn. Piaget: the functioning of intelligence, not its content, is predetermined by heredity. 86 Logico-mathematical structures are not abstracted from objects in the world, but from reflections on one’s actions on such objects. Case study: the pacifier dilemma: suck the pacifier or throw the pacifier out and drink from the bottle. 88 The child’s method of discovery is accidental. 89 The child has a rudimentary mental representation of the removal-of-the-pacifier-scheme. 94 Speculation: cognitive development is not the child’s cumulative experience with physical objects and actions, but a culturally modulated expression of evolving control and power within established social practices, 95 from which it is inseparable. Logic is post hoc and reconstructive [ I think, therefore I was (not Descartes) ], not a primary model of engagement. 97ff James A. Whitson, Cognition as a Semiosic Process: From Situated Mediation to Critical Reflective Transcendence. semiotics = study of semioses (= the activity of signs). 98 Cognition, understood as one function of semiosis, takes place within the world and not in ‘minds’ construed as somehow separate from or outside the world. [ Frege (): reference ( ) – sense (meaning in dictionary) ] Saussure (): sign = (signifiant (image acoustique)+ signifié (concept)). Pierce (): a sign is composed of 3 irreducible elements: an object, a representamen and an interpretant (triad) ( example: reading the barometer (r) - expected rain (o) – taking an umbrella with you (i) ). Something becomes a representamen in relation to an object by virtue of the possibility that an interpretant will be produced. Deledalle (1992): Saussure and Pierce are untranslatable [ into each other ], because their underlying philosophies and logics are incompatible (D, 1992, 289-290). 100 cognition as a process that is both social and neurological, a process in which representations are created and given meaning in a process that integrates social and perceptual levels of organization. (Clancey & Roschelle, 1991,4). 103 The social, economic, cultural, linguistic, psychological, neurological etc can be seen as ‘levels of organization’ – account for processes that actively and intricately cut across such levels. 105 Knowledge exists as something distributed across diverse aspects of our mental, physical and social world. 106 The sign does not simply denote another object in the world. 107 Saussure: linguistic sign as a psychological entity, a combination of a concept and a sound pattern [ not between a thing and a name ]. 108 cf concept <tree> and sound patterns "arbre", "Baum", "tree". 109 Concepts of the kind addressed in formal logic are not the kind of things that thought is made of. Semiology studies the role of signs as part of social life. 110 Lacan () inverts the priority of the signifié over the signifiant vs an interpretation of the signifié as a referent (i.e. an object that exists prior to the sign, and is referred to by the signifiant). Chaining of signifiers (5 people, 5 names, 5 fingers, the numers 1 2 3 4 5). But mind the differences between the tasks using the signifiers in different situations (e.g. school mathematics and home – e.g. more / less / no more ) – the semantic meaning and pragmatic force of terms within different discursive practices (cf reserach Jean Lave and Valerie Walkerdine). 126 Situationalists: Concepts are not abstract, self-contained entities, but are both situated and progressively developed through activity. 127 Generality of concepts can be achieved concretely (and not by abstraction) and in ways that are not necessarily analytically rule-governed or explicit. 129 A conceptual generality of signs coordinates conception with perception and action. 130 Toulmin (1972): concepts are micro-institutions and institutions are macro-concepts. Toulmin: representation – ‘Vorstellung’ as private/personal, ‘Darstellung’ as public. But representational signs include such things as the transient activation states and neural maps, denying the very split between mind and world (vs the Cartesian framework), avoiding the mistake of understanding this as a matter of (formal) types represented by (substantial) tokens – Darstellung is something socially accomplished and not a matter of performing formal operations on some inward mental symbol system (as in ‘Vorstellungen’). 132 Pierce distinguishes immediate objects (the world as the sign represents it to be) and dynamic objects (the world that actually determines the success or failure of any given interpretant). E.g. immediate: the temperature > fever, dynamic: the dagnosis of the fever underlying disease. Situated cognition approach: more substantive and intuitive than procedural and algorithmic.133 Example, the Weight Watcher’s cheese problem: allowed to take ¾ of 2/3 of a cup of cheese: how done? Just practical, or calculate? Using the commutative property of multiplication (3/4 of 2/3 is 2/3 of ¾)? Using robust intuitions of quantitative relations (sixpack, eggs)? 140 We have to understand the orchestration of algorithmic and non-algorithmic processes within cognitive practices. 141 Our discursive practices do not just represent reality but actually engender the realities that they presume to signify. 147 Understand ‘cognitive’ activities within the social practices in which they are embedded. Understand human cognition as processes and achievements of situated social practices. 281ff Carl Bereiter, Situated Cognition and How to Overcom It. Tolman (1949): place learning is mainly perceptual and not behavioral. Woodworth (1958): shift experimental psychology toward a consideration of organisms interacting with their environments – observations of rats learning the environment (e.g. mazes). Animal cognition is situated as well. And human situated cognition has a biological basis. 283 Nevertheless humans transcend their animal heritage by 1 creating new social structures and practices, 2 through acquiring expertise and 3 by science – all 3 represent a sense in which humans may be said to overcome the situatedness of cognition. cf Popper’s metaphoric schema of three worlds: 1 the material world of inanimate and animate things (including human beings), 2 the subjective world of individual mental life and 3 the world of immaterial knowledge objects. Situated cognition argued that W1 and W2 are much more directly and intimately connected than previous cognitive theories had supposed. W3 is by the situated cognition approach mostly seen as practices of scientist, concrete embodiment of knowledge in books and instruments, and mental models in individual minds. 284 CB states that this view misses the core of W3 – a world wholly created by the human intellect that enables us to escape the situational embeddedness of cognition. Formal education is our individual escape route from the confines of situated cognition. Non-situated cognition is found only in rule-based AI machines in which cognition is an entirely internal process of symbol manipulation. 288 Transfer of learned intelligent behavior is a matter of the same kind of relationship coming into play in different situations. It’s anything but automatic. Participants have to look for the relationship and it’s kind is abstract, based on formal, structural or logical correspondences. 289 Children are able to carry out both concrete and symbolic operations, but most of them fail to make a connection between them. 290 cf math students who can solve equations without [any need for] conceptual understanding. This is dfferent in intentional, goal-directed learning, in which CB distinguishes task-completion goals, instructional goals and knowledge-building goals. 291 These goals differ in their degree of situatedness. CB argues for thinking of situatedness as varying along a continuum. At one end organisms that are rigidly adapted to one particular environment, at the other end rule-based AI. A student with conceptual understanding is farther toward the nonsituated end of such a continuum. 292 Studying cognitive activity mainly through what we are conscious of, is like doing an ethnography of a people based solely on observing riots and demonstrations. Symbolic processes are exceptional and by no means representative of the great bulk of cognitive activity. 293 It’s one thing to think logically about concrete reality; it is something else to think logically about propositions (which may or may not refer to concrete reality). 294 Disciplined movement back and forth between W1 and W3 gives us the hypothetico-deductive method and opens up vast possibilities for theory development, problem solving and design. 295 Sometimes there is a confusion between process and product. Not in case of manufacturing paint, but e.g. if the product of the activity is knowledge. Situated knowledge develops in practice in some physical and social situation. 296 Distinguish knowledge implicit in the process from knowledge that is the product of the process. 298 In order to work effectively with nonsituated knowledge objects, people have to master the practices of nonsituated cognition. 299 By treating all knowledge as situated, situated cognition renders the world of knowledge objects invisible. 301ff Yrö Engeström & Michael Cole, Situated Cognition in Search of an Agenda. 302 Cole (1995) Conceptualize situation and practice as units of analysis, focussing on notions of practice, activity, context, situation and event. Dewey (Logic, 1938): a situation is not a single object or event, but refers to our experiencing of objects and events in connection to a contextual whole. Other notions: social world (symbolic interactionism) and mediated action (Wertsch, 1995). 304 In concrete analysis of situated, practice-bound cognition, one wants to have both a collective and an individual perspective. 306 Bronfenbrenner (1983): development takes place as if [walking] in a moving train (sc the practices in which the person is involved, develops too). 308 The developmental potential lies in the fact that the contradiction is whithin both the individual and the collective: it’s inherent in every practice. Situated interventionism is not satisfied with observing and analyzing situated practices – it is engaged in creating new forms of practices. Kisser, T., Selbstbewußtsein und Interaktion : Spinozas Theorie der Individualität, 1998 9 Realität als Selbstbeziehung. 10 Tugend (virtus) als affirmation der eigenen Natur in der Handlung, Praxis (actio) bestimmt im Selbstbezug: die Praxis der Glückseligkeit ist Glückseligkeit der Praxis als Selbstbezüglichkeit. Darin gibt es notwendig eine Übereinstimmung von sich selbst bestimmendenden Individuum und Welt. 11 Spinoza vs Hedonismus (Glücksuche ohne Norm) und Gesetzethik (bloßen Moralität ohne Glück). 14 Die Entwicklung [der Triebwirklichkeit zum Guten als dem vollkommenen Glück] vollzieht sich als fortschreitende Qualifikation des Triebes durch die Reflexion: es bezeichnet die Genese des Bewußtseins, in dem das Subject seinen Weltzusammenhang reflektiert. Die Reflexion steht so von vornherein in einem Zusammenhang mit der, sei es gescheiterten, sei es gelungen Interaktion. Erst in der Reflexion entsteht die Aktivität, die den Zusammenhang von eigener und fremder Wirklichkeit erzeugt. Das Spezifische des Menschen ist die Einheid von Reflexion und Aktion. 15 Spinoza’s Project der Ethik als die Bestimmung dieser reflexiv vermittelten Tätigkeit. Spinoza’s Monismus in dem Gedanken einer Einheit fon Theorie und Praxis. 16 Der Mensch muß die Selbstbestimmung im vollen Sinne der Selbstdefinition wie der Selbstkausalisierung verwirklichen. 18 Spinoza versteht unter Substanz das was in sich ist und aus sich begriffen wird – Selbstreferenz. Modus ist die Affektionen der Substanz – das, was in einem Anderen ist, wodurch es auch begriffen wird. Attribut ist das, was der Verstand von der Substanz, als deren Wesenheid ausmachend, erkennt. 23 Sp. vs Nominalismus (mehrere Substanzen von gleicher Natur). 25 Die Notwendigkeit der Existenz resultiert aus der Logik des Begriffes der allumfassenden Wirklichkeitesinstanz als solcher. Alle Attribute drücken die Realität oder das Sein der Substanz aus. 26 cf Euklischen Geometrie mit Konstruktionsaufgaben für Figuren: wenn eine Figur konstruiert werden kann, existiert sie im geometrischen Sinne. In der Substanz wird die Existenz notwendig mitgedacht. Die Einheit von Substanz und Attributen ergibt den Gedanken einer inneren Differenzierung und damiet der Einheit von Einheid und Vielfalt. Diese innere Differenzierung ergibt die Welt als organisierte Vielheit (Substanz [causa sui] als ‘causa immanens’ der Dinge). 50 Irreducible Qualitäten erfüllen das Kriterium von Substantialität, nur aus sich selbst verstanden werden zu können. 121 Spinoza löst das Problem des Übergangs von der Substanz zum Modus, das Problem der Subjektiviering der Substanz, in der Konzeption der Selbstbestimmung nicht nur als einer gemeinsamen Form zweier differenter Pole, sonders als wirklich gedachter Identität. Operational wird die Einheit von Substanz und Modus in der Konzeption der Idee der Idee – der Bezug zwischen der Idee die das Subject ist [im selbstbestimmt Handeln], und den Ideen, die es hat. 122 Die Übereinstimmung von Denken und Wirklichkeit findet statt zwischen dem Sein des Denkens und dem Denken dieses Sein des Denkens. Das Verstand hat die Kompetenz die Idee der Ideen zu bilden und sich selbst als Idee reflexiv zu erkennen. 123 Die Geltung der Idee der Idee wird begründet mit der Geltung der Idee der Substanz. So reproduziert sich der Zirkel der Erkenntnistheorie im Angesicht der Substanz selbst. 125 Wirkung folgt aus Ursache, Idee der Wirkung aus der Idee der Ursache. Die Selbstreferentialität der Kausalbeziehung behauptet die Emergenz einer neuen Qualität, des Erkennen als sochen, deren Grund nicht sichtbar werden kann. ( cf nt 5 Es ist, als ob man seinen Hinterkopf im Spiegel sehen wollte, indem man sich ganz schenell umdreht. ) 126 Das Erkennen muß sich in der Spinozaischen Theorie immer schon als wahrheitskompetent verstehen, ohne jeh verstehen zu können, wie es das sein soll. Auch wenn man die praktische Philosophie Spinozas iherer Radikalität und Klarheit wegen bewundert, kann man so nie definitiv wissen, ob das Ich, das aus dem Sein der Substanz deduziert wurde, wirklich Ich bin. Lave, J. & E. Wenger, Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, 1991 Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) place the acquisition of Knowledge in the context of social relationships – in a Community of Practice. It is not so much that learners acquire structures or models to understand the world, but that they participate in frameworks that have a social structure. A concept does not obtain its meaning by clear definition, but rather in its interconnections with persons, activities, knowing and the world. They propose the concept of legitimate peripheral participation, situating learning in the trajectories of participation in which it takes on meaning. Person > practitioner: changing knowledge, skill and discourse as part of a developing identity, linking meaning and action in the world. Situated learning activity > legitimate peripheral participation: located in a field of maturated practice, communities with histories and developmental cycles, transforming newcomers into old-timers. Knowing located in relations among practicioners, newcomers move centripetally through a complex form of practice, creating possibilities for understanding the world as experienced. Social world in the process of reproduction, transformation and change. Forms of membership, construction of identities, location and organization of mastery in communities, problems of power, access and transparency, ... Magnusson, D., Individual Development from an Interactional Perspective. A longitudinal study, 1988 4 It’s not enough to know the individual’s general trait dispositions if we want to understand or explain his behavior in a specific situation. 7 Integration of three traditional metatheoretical approaches: mental, biological and environmental. 3 basic propositions: 1 the individual functions and develops as a total, integrated organism, 2 ongoing, dynamic and reciprocal interaction between individual and environment, 3 person-environment interactions are dependent on interactions among biological and psychological subsystems. 16 goal of psychology: understand and explain why people think, feel, act and react as they do in real life situations – emphasis on lawfulness rather than on predicting and controlling behavior (as in the Watson tradition). Integration of 3 main approaches: 1 mentalistic (cognitive processes, information processes, decision making, learning, personality), 2 biological (genetics, maturation), 3 environmental. 21 Traditional psychology was often variable-oriented, closely tied to a reductionistic model of man. DM vs reification of variables – variables do not exist as anything other than a specific aspect of the functioning of the total organism, viewed from a certain perspective. Interactional view: person-oriented, individual as organized whole, functioning as a totality with specific patterns of behavior. 23 Person vs variable – cf idiographic vs nomothetic, typological vs dimensional, clinical vs statistical. 24 General situational effects (the same for all individuals), differential situational effects (specific for (groups of) individuals). 25 Individuals differ with respect to their cross-situational patterns of behavior. Lewin: B=f(P,E) [ Behavior is a function of the interaction of Person & Environment]. 27 The situation is interpreted and the meaning assigned to the total situation provides the main basis for the interaction with the environment. 28 Traditional experimental psychology: environment as a source of stimulation. Interactionism: environment as a source of information [ about patterns ]. 29 situation-outcome contingencies + behavior-outcome contingencies > predictive control > action control (goal-directed activity and the experience of meaningfulness). 30 In individual development a significant influence by the systems of values, norms, rules and roles, underlying the behavior of significant persons > learn and integrate into one’s own personallity the values, norms, rules and roles of one’s culture. 31 Role of self-perception, self-evaluation and self-respect: intelligence, mental capacity, subjective competence, inner and outer control, predictive and behavior control, movitation, learned helplessness. 32 Reciprocity in person-environment interaction in stead of unidirectonal causality: the individual influences and is influenced by the environment at each stage of development. 34 Role of life events and chance events (like educational and vocationel choices). Individual as active purposeful agent in the person-environment interaction process. 36 continuous interplay between biological brain processes, other phsyciological processes, mental processes (thoughts and emotions) and behavior. E.g. moods are dependent on the excretion of serotonin and the metabolite 5HIAA in the plasma. No unidirectional but a reciprocal relation between biological and mental factors. e.g. reaction to a threatening situation > activation of the autonomous nervous system > excretion of adrenaline; social factors affect the levels of serotonin and 5HIAA (experiments on monkeys - sociopharmacology). 38 demands for achievement > males more adrenaline then females; if threat to children > females more adrenalin then males. 40 Maturation and experience – developmental processes of transition into new states. Interactions at various levels of biological and psychological subsystems. 41 Temporal perspective: different speeds of interactions (cf neurotransmitters with generation interactions). Each subsystem must be analyzed in terms of its context in the total person-environment system and the manner in which it affects and is affected by other subsystems. 42 Also there is need for cross-cultural research in order to determine what is (in)variant across cultures in individual development. The same methodology cannot be applied without reservations to all levels of subsystems. 43 Both person and environment change across time in a way that is characterized by order and regularity. 45 The proper way to investigate the structures and processes varies with the level of complexity in the relevant hierarcy of systems. Mind the difference between individual and collective behavior ( difference in information content). 47 Differences in cognitive-affective factors (competence, goals, values, motives, strategies etc), temperament (impulsivity, sociability, activity etc) and conduct (agressiveness, restlessness, Type A behavior etc). > difference in patterning of these various aspects of the individual functioning as a totality. From variable-oriented to pattern-oriented methods. 49 Our problems should be rooted in the world or real life phenomen, not in the world of theory. Usefulness of direct observation in natural settings as basis for theory-building. 50 Watson wanted to predict and control behavior. 51 But the relation of interacting systems is often probabilistic, uncertain and unpredictable (cf weather-forecast). 52 Continuity and change – individual functioning as totality, changing the method of functioning across time (maturation and experience), coherence of developmental processes and changes, inherited dispositions as basis and limits for change and stability, individual differences in pace and patterning of factors in the developmental process. 54 Partially specific cross-situational patterns of individual functioning and partially specific cross-situational profiles. 56 Although relatively enduring dispositions characterize a person’s way of functioning, this functioning cannot be understood and explained solely in terms of single traits. 63 Instruments and procedures for data collection and treatment, as well as the data per se, should be appropriate to the character of the problem under consideration, with particular respect to the level of complexity of the structures and processes (cf again the weather: information about the mean temparatures per season does not provide information about the day to day variation). 64 Consistency in aggregate data at the trait level cannot be used as an argument against the existence of person-situation interaction. And individual differences in cross-situational profiles, based on situation-specific data, cannot be used as an argument against the existence of personality traits. 67 MD vs reification of hypothetical constructs (e.g. anxiety, dependency, intelligence), and vs the lack of conceptual or theoretical basis from which to choose the relevant variables. NB Factoranalysis of situation-specific data yields factors of a different character from those obtained by factor analyses of non-situation-specific data. Measuring change – mind biological age, e.g. early maturing girls using significantly more alcohol than late maturing girls at the age of 14.5 (cf interest in ‘mental age’). 77 Need for complementary models and methods for analysis that are directed to the study of individuals als totalities. MD distinguishes types of person-directed methods: 1 cross-sectional classification approach, 2 longitudinal classification analysis (analysis of the complete set of longitudinal multivariate observations), 3 look for developmental types (longitudinal value configurations that are more frequent than expected). 97 MD’s Research Project – data collection. Variables covered by data for the main cohort during the longitudinal research during the school-period: conditions of the Home (type and material standard of the home, parent’s education, family constallation, parent’s engagement outside home, parent’s work conditions), mental capacity (general intellectual ability, creative ability), achievement (grades, scholastic achievement, school motivation, relative achievement, educational and vocational plans and aspirations), attitudes-interests-evaluations ( self-concept, self-perception, sexe-role identification, interest domains (social, technical etc), sense of control of own life, life values, norms, evaluations, behavior intentions, sanctions, norm transmitters, self-confidence), behavior (conduct: agressiveness, shyness, motor restlessness, lack of concentration, school motivation, disharmony, tension (overambition), norm violations, delinquency, alcohol and drug use, social timidity, leisure time activities, emotions and temperament, behavior at home), biology (general physical capacity, neurophysiological conditions, EEG, hormonal activity/reactivity, adrenaline, noradrenaline, biological age, ossification, age at menarche), social relations (relations with father, with mother, with peers, dating) 130 It is more common for a person to have more than one problem. Effective research on each of the 3 aspects of maladjustment (criminality, psychiatric illness and alcohol abues) cannot be done in isolation, neither in a current nor in a developmental perspective. 151 Early-maturing girls were found to have violated various types of norms consideribly more frequently than their late-matured peers. Biological maturity is related to social adjustment by the way of the girl’s own choice of peers. Interactive effect of biological [ early maturation ] and social influences [ contacts with older boys (with lower educational aspirations) – reducing the amount of time for studying ] > profound consequences for the life styles of the girls at adult age. 167 Strong relation of the combined ratings of agressiveness [ conduct ] and motor restlessness [ physiological reactions – self-induced increase in sensory stimulation? low adrenaline increase in stress situations – low responsiveness – ineffective feedback-systems? ] at an early age and registered criminality at an adult age. 186 When early misconduct appears together with a criminal record before 18, there is a high risk for being registered for criminal offenses and alcohol abuse. Magnusson, D. (ed), Toward a Psychology of Situations: an Interactional Perspective, 1981 Three conceptual distinctions between environment ‘as it is’ and environment ‘as it is perceived’. Five actual environmental variables: physical-geographical, biological, sociocultural; perceived: the world in which we experience, feel, think and act. Data for actual and perceived environments are complementary. 19 The person is an active intentional agent in the continuously ongoing, reciprocal person-situation interaction process. Actual situational properties: complexity, clarity, strength, promotion vs restriction, tasks, rules, roles, physical settings, other person(s). Person-bound properties: goals (intentions), perceived control, expectancies, needs and motivations, affective tones or emotions. 29 Perception of single situations may differ markedly across cultures, thus leading to differences in emotions, reactions and in molar behaviors. 30 Although e.g. the levels of anxiety aroused in specific sitution (in the woods at night, alone at home, alone in the woods) can differ across cultures, the way in which anxiety is expressed is similar. Interindividual differences in perceptions and interpretations of crucial job situations are a valuable basis for guidance and selection. One of the most convincing signs of a therapy’s adequacy would lie in its ability to effect a real change in the perception of crucial situations. 31 The essential basis for analyses of situations and situational conditions is the set of psychological problems that we formulate. Depending on the problem, the appropriate situation characteristic to investigate, the appropriate kind of data – quantitative or qualitative – and the appropriate method of data analysis, all vary. 361 N.S. Endler, Situational Aspects of Interactional Psychology. The focus on personal factors had its etiology in the ideology and social system of 19th century liberalism, which postulated that ‘our fate in social space depended predominantly on our individual qualities – we as individuals and not the prevailing social conditions shape our lives’. 367 A classification system [of situations] should be based primarely on the situations that people encounter and on the perception or meaning that the situations have for them. 368 Reactions to a situation are to a high degree a function of the individual’s perceptions of the situations. 369 We should focus on the psychological characteristics of situations and environments and treat the objective characteristics as one of the determinants (in addition to implicit clues, needs, cognitions and past experiences) of perception (psychological meaning) of situations and of behavior. 370 Unit of analysis: the persion-by-situation interaction unit. 371 It’s important to examine the dynamic ongoing chain of events, but it is also necessary to isolate the important personal and situational variables. Although situations have an impact on persons, individuals actively seek and select the persons and situations with whom they interact. 373 Infer the strategies and rules that individuals use in interacting with one another in various situations. navigation On the more basic level of a small organism: push (move away from danger – repellants) and pull (move to food/shelter, attractants); basic forms of intentionals emerge when e.g. (symbolic) signals of food (e.g. molecules that are not food themselves, but that indicate the presence of food and also provide information about the direction in which to find the food > vector) trigger an effective pull. (..) navigator A navigator in action contains at least the coordinates of a destination (a kind of ‘intentional’), a locator (e.g. the continuously updated GPS determination of the coordinates of the present location), internal maps of the travel-area and a (sometimes re-)calculated route (the optimal pathway from present location to destination). Interfaces (screen and/or sound) communicate a representation of the interactions of the movement (direction and speed) of the navigator, the updated location, the continuously actualized map and directives about the next move to be made in order to follow the optimal pathway to the destination. networks Network topology describes how network-nodes are connected (line, bus, star, ring, fully connected, mesh, (hierarchical) tree (a collection of star networks)).  Distinguished are signal topology (the actual path of the signals) and logical topology (e.g. a logical ring topology can be setup in a physical star topology). An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) diagram is an example of a "mesh" network diagram. In the context of network theory, a complex network is a network (graph) with non-trivial topological features—features that do not occur in simple networks such as lattices or random graphs. Most mathematical, fysical, biological, social, and technological networks display substantial non-trivial topological features, with patterns of connection between their elements that are neither purely regular nor purely random. Two well-known and much studied classes of complex networks are Scale-Free networks and Small-World networks, whose discovery and definition are canonical case-studies in the field. Both are characterized by specific structural features—power-law degree distributions for the former and short path lengths and high clustering for the latter. A network is named Scale-Free if its degree distribution, i.e. the probability that a node selected uniformly at random has a certain number of links (degree), follows a particular mathematical function called a power law. A scale-free network is a network whose degree distribution follows a power law, at least asymptotically. That is, the fraction P(k) of nodes in the network having k connections to other nodes goes for large values of k as P(k) ~ k−γ where γ is a constant whose value is typically in the range 2<γ<3, although occasionally it may lie outside these bounds. Scale-free networks are noteworthy because many empirically observed networks appear to be scale-free, including the protein networks, citation networks, and some social networks. A Small-World network is a type of mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors of one another, but most nodes can be reached from every other by a small number of hops or steps. Small-world networks have been discovered in a surprising number of natural phenomena. Random networks are vulnerable to random perturbations, whereas small-world networks are robust. However, small-world networks are vulnerable to targeted attack of hubs [ central nodes at an intersection of a lot of connections ], whereas random networks cannot be targeted for catastrophic failure. Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) is an emergent scientific field that brings together traditional Social Network Analysis (SNA), Link Analysis (LA) and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) within network science and network theory. DNA statistical tools are generally optimized for large-scale networks and admit the analysis of multiple networks simultaneously in which, there are multiple types of nodes (multi-node) and multiple types of links (multi-plex). Whereas nodes in a traditional SNA model are static, nodes in a DNA model have the ability to learn. Properties change over time; nodes can adapt. Artificial Neural Network An Artificial Neural Network (ANN), also called a simulated neural network (SNN) or commonly just neural network (NN) is an interconnected group of artificial neurons that uses a mathematical or computational model for information processing based on a connectionistic approach to computation. In most cases an ANN is an adaptive system that changes its structure based on external or internal information that flows through the network. A typical small ANN can have this structure (of which the components will be explained below):  Network Training Distinguished are supervised and unsupervised learning. Supervised learning is learning from examples. The training set consists of a set of sample inputs and the desired outputs corresponding to those inputs. The neural network adjusts the weights of its synapses [ = connections ] to learn the relationship between input-output pairs. Successfully trained neural networks can then be used to find most suitable output for any valid input. The goal of supervised learning is to find a function f, given a set of points of the form (x, f(x)). Applications: function modeling and prediction, data classification, pattern recognition. A supervised-learning Artificial Neural Network (ANN) consists of three types of layers of neurons: source-layer, activation-layer(s) and target-layer. These layers are connected by synapses (the neurons within any layer are not connected). Each synapse has a weight (most of the time at first randomly assigned to it, after that the action = input data * weight,) Each activation-neuron has an input, output and error value. Input source-neuron: data from environment Input activation-neuron: sum of synapses input data * weight Activation-neuron action: apply a differentiable function on the input (activation function) Output activation-neuron: propagate result activation function forward via associated target synapses Error at an activation-neuron is a measure of the difference between desired output and the actual obtained output. It is evaluated at the target-layer, and is backpropagated to the activation-layers. Hence, the name 'backpropagation algorithm'. The algorithm trains the network such that the mean squared error (or another function) is minimized. Training Set = Set of training samples Training Sample = (input vector, desired vector) Learning rate is one of the parameters which governs how fast a neural network learns and how effective the training is. e.g. changing the weight with only 25% of the required change (in order to meet the value of the last sample) will ask for more samples (= longer training), but yield a more robust (less oscillating) error function). Typically a learning rate is chosen to be in between 0.1 and 0.3. In backpropagation algorithm with momentum, the weight change is also influenced by the previous change seen by the synapse. This ensures that learning does not deviate due to noise present in the training data. It also helps the objective function to converge faster and thereby speeds up the learning process. (Weight Change =LearningRate * (Change suggested by the mathematical expression in algorithm) + Momentum * (Previous Weight Change)) Jitter is performed during training to attempt to help the network get out of any local minimum. (At every JitterEpoch, for all synapses in the network: Weight = Weight + Small Random Noise). The bakcpropagation algorithm requires the activation function to be continuous and differentiable: e.g. Sigmoid (y = 1 / (1 + Exp(-x))), Linear (y=x), Logarithmic (y = Log(1 + |x|)), Tanh(y = Tanh(x)) and Sinusoidal (y = Sin(x)) activation functions are used. Unsupervised learning: In unsupervised learning methods, the neural network simply receives a set of inputs from the external environment. It may seem mysterious to imagine what the network could possibly learn from just a set of inputs. However, it is possible to formally prove that an unsupervised network can build representations of the input that can be used for decision making. The goal of unsupervised learning is to build representation of the input data by organizing it appropriately. Applications: clustering, dimensionality reduction, patter recognition in unstructured data, self organizing maps. Kohonen SOMs (Self-Organizing Maps) are unsupervised learning neural networks widely used to reduce dimensionality of input space preserving its topological structure. A typical Kohonen SOM architecture consists of an input layer connected to a output layer (Two-dimensional Kohonen layer) via a Kohonen Connector consisting of Kohonen Synapses. Each neuron in a Kohonen Layer is associated with a unique set of co-ordinates in two-dimensional space, and hence is referred to as a Position Neuron. The input layer with 'n' input neurons is fed with n-dimensional input data one by one. The output layer organizes itself to represent the inputs. Hence the name 'self-organizing map'. The objective of SOM training is to ensure that different parts of the network respond similarly to similar input vectors. So, the training mainly involves analysing the behaviour of the network for a training sample and adjusting the weights of synapses to ensure that the network exhibits a similar behaviour for a similar input. The neighborhood value at a neuron determines the factor by which its weight vector is affected by changes at the ‘winning neuron’ at every training-cycle. Kohonen Layer lattice topology specifies the arrangement of neurons, the two-dimensional lattice forming the layer. Neurons can be arraged in a rectangular lattice, with each neuron having four immediate neighbors. Neurons can be arraged in a hexagonal lattice, with each neuron having six immediate neighbors. Kohonen layers of different shapes are e.g. planar, linear, circular, cylindrical or toroidal (circural rows and circular columns). Designing an artificial neural network for a particular application involves choosing the right type of network, finding a suitable number of source-, activation- and target-neurons , the appropriate method to initialize the weights, suitable learning algorithm, training epochs, learning rate and the number of training samples to use. Most of these parameters depend on the application for which the neural network is being designed. It has been mathematically proved that a backpropagation network with single hidden. layer when appropriately trained, can be used to approximate any [mathematical] function. So a single hidden layer is the best choice in most cases. (Having multiple hidden layers speeds up the learning process and the trained network fits exactly with the training samples but fails to perform well on the test data. This effect is called overtraining where the trained network tends to memorize the training samples instead of learning them.) Proper initialization of synapse weights greatly influences the training speed and also determines the effectiveness of training. Usually, the weights are initialized to random values between -0.5 to +0.5 (too high initial values tend to result in saturation region after activation, too small initial values result in values close to zero). (improvement: http://clemens.bytehammer.com/nguyen-widrow.pdf ) The more training samples, the more effective the training is. A fascinating application of ANN is a ‘hybrot’ (a robot that’s controled with the amplified electric signals from the biological neurons of a rat + giving feedback to these neurons, which are learning from this feedback – first experiment in 2002: http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/13047/?a=f ). Examples of of ANN’s, which are available as ‘open source’: Flood – an Open Source Neural Network C++ library: http://www.cimne.com/flood/default.asp with extensive documentation of the background mathematics NeuronDotNet - Artificial Neural Networks in C# http://neurondotnet.freehostia.com/ with online explanation and nice examples of e.g. character recognition and the traveling salesman problem (also downloadable as executables to see it work rightaway) Niehoff, D., The language of life : how cells communicate in health and disease, 2005 4 Biologists rank chemical communication as one of the seminal advances in cellular societies. The proteins encoded in the genes build and maintain the molecular machinery, including the network of signaling pathways that allow the cells to function as a single organism. Genes conserve the ‘language of life’ – living cells converse (with) this language. 5 Anton van Leeuwenhoek 1682 descriptions of one-celled ‘animalcules’. 6 Processes that sustain life emerge from the collaborations between inanimate molecules. 10 ‘random walk’ of bacteria. 12 ‘chemotaxis’ – movement, directed by chemicals. 13 20 amino acids form the building blocks of any organic megamolecule - proteins folding into useful shapes, e.g. a ‘rotor protein’ or ‘flagellar protein’, conspiring to move a bacterium. 15 A bacterial ‘sentence’: binding of a repellant signal (e.g. a toxin like a nickel ion) to the Tar receptor of an E. coli sets the helical piston swinging, prompting CheW (the ‘word’ heading the intracellular portion of the sentence) to activate the kinase CheA. This enzyme transfers a phosphate group to CheY, phosphorylated CheY in turn tells the rotor protein, currently turning counterclockwise, to change direction. 17 Methylation serves as a primitive form of memory – as physical record of the bacterium’s most recent interactions with the environment, the methylation state of the receptor records the concentration of attractant or repellant. 18 Fundamental principles common to the transfer of any type of biological information via chemical signals: the exploitation of protein typgraphy to discriminate signals; the use of transmembrane receptors to circumvent the barrier posed by the plasma membrane; the coordination of perception and response, as well as the integration of multiple signals, by means of protein relays featuring kinases; the regulation of receptor sensitivity by chemical modification. These principles form the template for the communication and cooperation of biological cells. 21ff how the marine bacteria Vibrio Fischeri cooperate producing light as defense. 25 an enormous range of behaviors are regulated by cell-cell communication. 27 the evolution of chemical signaling – quorum sensing – facilitated the emergence of group behavior in bacteria. 29 the autoinducer AI-2 may be one of the oldest and most familiar ‘words’ on earth. 34 A kind of bacterial Esperanto: signals like AI-2 help strangers who speak different languages among themselves collaborate to define neigborhoods, assign jobs and recruit passersby. 35 C. Alexander: Pattern Language – configurations of architectural featurs that bear a particular relationship to one another. 36 ideal patterns as the best solution, as property of a well-formed environment. Molecular language – three-dimensional aspect – also a pattern language. 37 By mixing and matching receptors and relays a cell can economize, creating multiple signaling pathways with fewer proteins. 38 Bacteria as the most complex, sophisticated organisms, having a hundred times more genes than animals. 39 The basic syntax of the language of life – the signal-receptor-relay sequence – has been conserved across kingdoms and it’s also the foundation of the sophisticated biological sentences of higher organisms. 54 Hormones replace metaphysics with molecules. 68 Connect and share signaling proteins by conjunctions. Eukaryotic cells (with nucleus, inner membranes etc) came up with a design element that was the molecular equivalent of ‘and’ or ‘or’: linker, adaptor or scaffolding proteins. 69 proteins’ interaction domains contain segments of 40 to 350 amino acids have the inherent ability to recognize and dock with a ‘consensus sequence’ on another protein. These interaction domains emerged as an important locus of social control, organizing proteins into teams and networks. 70 It may not be necessary to invent many kinds of new gene products, but rather increase the number of interactions that any one protein can make through the reiterated use of simple binding domains, thereby expanding the possibilities for combinatorial associations, and by doing this achieving more sophisticated functions. 73 E.g. splicing an interaction domain to create a new connector. 76 Divergence in the accumulated genetic changes, but conservation in the function and structure of many of the mechanisms of the cell. Epigenesis: differentiation and maturation: from cell to organism. 87 1952 Alan Turing: The Chemical Basis for Morphogenesis (hypothetical interaction between morphogenes: form-giving molecules – mathematical models of spatial patterns, resembling patterns as found in plants and animals). 89 Contingencies enable cells to use the same genome in a multitude of ways, decisions that chart the course of embryonic development. To make proteins, DNA needs proteins (‘transcription factors’). 90 Gene activators and gene repressors. 92 Specialized cells are characterized by a distinctive pattern of gene activity and, as a consequence, a distinct repertoire of proteins. 93 Embryo’s sense of direction (polarity of head/tail, front/back), inside/outside, compartimentization (modularity), all steered by chemical signaling. 130 The cell is a society of proteins that interact with each other – they talk, send messages, go to meetings etc. 131 Opposing teams of proteins (proapoptotic cell killers and antiapoptotic cell savers). 137 Shakespeare used a vocabulary of just under 30.000 different words to compose his plays. Using only a few dozen wordt, metazoan embryos compose bodies that are also great works of art. The vocabulary of the development – concise, adaptable, and powerful – stands as a tribute to how much can be accomplished with a handful of conserved patterns and a few well-chosen words. 140 homeostasis – the coordinated physiological processes that maintain most of the steady states in the organism – is a dynamic process, an intricate network of checks and balances. 161 E.g. the two-faced double-dealer Myc (a transcription factor) drives both cell proliferation and cell death. 173 There are over a thousand potential combinations of signaling molecules [ related to insulin signal pathways ]. 179 pro-insulin and anti-insulin actions counterbalance one another. 181 { low leptin levels (few fat cells ) > eat more, high leptin levels (many fat cells) > eat less } > keep body weight within 15 to 20% of a possibly biologically predetermined set point. 182 obesity, when rise of leptin levels is not ‘heard’ & ‘ansered’. 184 the obese carry genes that are atavisms of a time of nutritional privation in which we no longer live. 187 The mutabilit of DNA, the modular nature of proteins, and the co-option of old molecules for new purposes represent some of life’s most successful efforts to acommodate the need to adapt. 188 Behavior – a response to a percieved stimulus – was evolution’s ultimate coping mechanism, a solution to today’s problems and a way to change again tomorrow if necessary. Hormones were one solution to a new variation on the problem of long-distance message transmission. 189 The neuron evolved special channel proteins that allow it to manipulate the conceptration of charged particles (ions) and conduct electrical impulses. These synapses lock specific neurons into a long-term relationship. Over 100 different signaling molecules (neurotransmitters). 194 Cajal understood that the neuron is a one-way-street, dendrites taking in information, axons forwarding information. Synapse (term by Sherrington) connects the axon to a neuron. 198 action potential > opening calcium channels > vesicles release of neurotransmitters > to the receptors of the postsynaptic neuron. 200ff growth of axons steered by ‘lane markers’ (adhesion proteins laminins), ‘chemoattractants’ (netrin – ‘go here’, ‘take turn’), repellent (ephrin – ‘do not enter’, ‘roadblock’ ). 209 After neuronal migration and synapse formation a young brain wired about 1015 connections. 210 After that synapse elimination is the refinement. Activity and experience shape synapses and our nervous system. Memory – experience recorded in the actual physical structure of the neuron. 213 calcium as main messenger – active CAM (calcium-calmodulin-dependent protein) kinase is memory’s best friend. Eric Kandel – research on the giant marine snail Aplysia (only 20.000 neurons), learning from electric shocks. 214 short-term memory requires only modification to existing proteins [ adding or subtracting methyl-groups, while long-term memory storage entails the sythesis of new proteins and modifications of the physical architecture of the synapse [ MAP > CREB > gene-expressions > proteins > addition of new synapses ]. 215 high-frequency electrical stimulation of neural pathways in the hyppocampus can evoke LTP (long-term potentiation). 218 Like high-frequency electrical stimulation, terrifying events can remodel the brain, re-creating the traumatic event in the structure of the neuron through the amygdala. 221 cf also how addictive drugs can lead to profound and persistent changes in the structure and function of neurons. 223ff the art of war: the human immune system. 225 The pathogen-recognition receptors of the innate immune system are hardwired into the genome (phagocytes) 226 Another line of defense is the adaptive immunity: RAG (recombination activating genes) proteins > lymphocytes (white blood cells) (activated by dendritic cells to play their specific role, coping with pathogens). 236 Myelin (lipids and proteins) around the nerves. Sometimes attacked by myelin-reactive T-cells, destroying the cells responsible for myelin production > autoimmune catastrophe like MS. 239 Like memory, immunity can overreact to the wrong information. 241ff AfCS (Alliance for Cellular Signaling) 2001ff project to understand how proteins interact to process information. Re-create the network of interconnected signaling pathways, exploring its dynamics. 245 Signaling pathways interact with one another and the final biological response is shaped by the interaction between pathways. NB signaling pathways are nog linear. Perceiving the larger picture opens ways for the development for new types of drugs, that block receptors (e.g. Herceptin for a type of breast cancer, or Gleevec that blocks a mutant receptor related to a type of leukemia, or Iressa that shuts of a corrupted growth factor receptor related to a type of lung cancer). From blunt instruments that kill all dividing cells (cytotoxic agents) to more specific tools (mechanism-based agents) that rebalance cell proliferation and cell death. 2004 After cell-switches first results that show substantial interactions between signal pathways with a hugh level of complexity. Resnick, L.B. e.o., Discourse, tools, and reasoning : essays on situated cognition, 1997 2 Mead (1934)described thought as conversation with the generalized other. Mead and Vygotsiy: interaction is the source and origin of thinking, but thinking as activity is carried out by the individual. Resnick c.s.: thought and reasoning as inherently social activities, in which talk and social interaction are not just a means by which people learn to think, but also how they engage in thinking. Dicsourcse is cognition is discourse. 3 Tools. People think not with their minds alone but assisted by, and in the interaction with other people and with tools. Not only physical tools, but also concepts, structures of reasoning and the forms of discourse that constrain and enable interaction within communities, qualify as tools. These tools (e.g. the concepts of democracy, zero, feedback) became ways of construing reality (Nelson Goodman (1976): worldmaking). Reasoning. Thinking is profoundly sociocultural in the Vygotskian spirit. 4 Reasoning as a fundamentally social activity in which ideas and concepts can work as communal tools of reasoning only when they form some kind of coherent whole (e.g. molecule in the context of atoms, ions, chemical bonding etc). Newcomers have to learn the organizing conceptual theories and the patterns of discourse used by particular reasoning communities. Thinking should be conceived as [inter]action rather than as abstract contemplation (vs the prototypical Cartesian individual). Situated cognition: the basic unit of analysis must connect thinking to [inter]action in the world and contribute to clarify how cognition enters into and is part of the diverse sets of tasks in which people engage. If primacy of the social, then theoretical puzzles regarding the role of the individual in socially constituted cognition. Cognitive activity is by nature interactive and therefore can only be understood when all partners in the interaction are accounted for. 5 Knowledge is not just jointly used in the course of cognitive activity but also jointly constituted. Strictly: knowledge exists only as long as the coconstructing group is present and interacting. The knowledge is constituted of the interacting contributions of all the members in their particular situation of co-activity – to know is to act in a particular situation of distributed cognition. Individuals can be thought of as passing through a series of temporally linked situations: new situations, new people and artefacts, new interactions. Knowledge is reconstituted in social interactions. 6 People function as part of systems in which knowledge and competent action are distributed. 7 This approach replaced the concept of coordinated cognition with that of distributed congnition. Technical tools and artifacts (e.g. texts, clocks, instruments for navigation etc) are located outside the human mind, but are nevertheless integral to mental work. They transform the nature of people’s interaction with other participants and with the environment. 8 Goodwin distinguishes between language (as universal, abstract, existing in the mind, Cartesian, without human agencies) and speech (as embodied competence, situated in the world [ in the interaction] ). 9 Much of the discourse, and thus of cognition, serves to situate an individual with respect to others, to establish a social role or identity. Social identities are enacted as if people were on a stage co-constructing or coplaying the parts they believe have been assigned to them. 10 Narratives of past events and collective remembering of them are easily avaiable resources in very close communities. (Sub-)culture is embedded, explicated, and activated through collective discourse in which assigned and assumed roles are enacted. 11 Bakhtin (1991): heteroglossia [ / hybridization ] – illustrates the polyphonic nature of the self – the social person is seen as a crossing of possible discourses. In therapy settings the enacting of multiple roles operates as a mechanism for acquiring a new identity. 12 Assumptions of situativity theory: distributed cognition, tuning to situations and the central role of discourse in learning. In most theories of learning, the most general, abstract, and nonsituated forms of knowledge are priviledged, assuming that these will be useful in the widest variety of future situations. Teaching-learning > constructivism (Piaget et al): to learn is to appropriate material from the environment and to make it one’s own by active and personal acts of construction and interpretation – active learning in which students interact directly with environmental phenomena for which they are expected to build their own meanings. Situativity theory goes beyond constructivism: the constructive interactions are sociocultural exchanges and newcomers adapt to and modify the environment. 13 Glick: development not as individual progress, but as participation in organizations and their technologies. Learning as apprenticeship – the learner is not yet a full member, but nevertheless a legitimate participant. When radical new technologies are introduced into a workplace, the cultural assumptions and practices are disrupted > new ways of thinking and talking > creation of a new culture in which people and technology interact. Grossen and Pochon: ethnotechnology (the study of interactions between technologies and societies) assumes that the use planned by the designer does not always coincide with the user’s actual use. Analyse uses of tools > what emerges has been co-created by designers and users, mutually appropriating each other’s ways of thinking. Perriault (1989) calls this emergent rationality the ‘logic of usage’, which could be interpreted as a social process of creation and the transmission of new semiotic tools. 15 Particular forms of reasoning develop through participation in what we term ‘accountable talk’, which occurs in any situation in which individuals are required to defend and justify their observations and conclusions. 16 Accountability as allocation of responsibility is a central aspect of the social meaning of actions and is accomplished through specific linguistic forms. Different ways in which people learn culturally appropriate forms of accountability. Development of language from the language of/for others to inner verbal thinking. Children’s language socialization can be seen as a socially distributed practice that is instanciated in culturally diverse ways (compare e.g. a child-centered western way with a more situation-centered Samoan way). 17 Students often see ‘nothing’ under the microscope or in an experiment. Our perceptions are so conditioned by our theories that we are nearly incapable of learning from experience, except when it is mediated by cultural practices of explanation and initiation into the proper talk of a knowledge community. 18 Familiarity with written texts and literacy practices invokes new forms of oral expression – there is a cultural evolution at work, in which mastery of one set of tools (the alphabetic code and texts embodied in that code), yields a new cultural tool (formal oral rhetoric) – a process of reconstitution of tools in use. 169 Allessandro Duranti and Elinor Ochs, Syncretic Literacy in a Samoan America Family. Three misconceptions of the concept of multiculturalism: 1. the misconception that language is a precice indicator of cultural orientation (language socialization – langauge as the most important semiotic tool for representing, transmitting and creating social order and cultural world views). But English can be used in a Samoan manner and Samoan in a manner appropriate to mainstream American interactions. Language is not a priviledged key to how cultures interface. Revise the notion of language as a code > see langauge as a set of practices, inculding specific ways of speaking and of interpreting the world as well as a means of interacting with human, symbolic and material resources available in the environment. 2 the misconception that members of multicultural communities are in one culture at the time. 171 Sometimes boundaries between what is considered traditional and what new, but more typically cultural threads from diverse sources are interwoven into a single interactional fabric. Belonging to more than one [cultural] community is not only imagined as an ideology of connections, but it is also enacted in daily routines that need to be unpacked, if we want to uncover the different cultural threads they both imply and sustain. 3 the misconception that each culture is homogenous and uncontaminated. A complex heterogeneity of traditions informs the practice of reading and writing (literacy). 172 Vs these misconceptions D&O propose ‘syncretic literacy’: an intermingling or merging of culturally diverse traditions informs and organizes literacy activity. 173 Bakhtin (1981): any living utterance in a living language is to one or another extent a hybrid. 265 Michèle Grossen and Luc-Olivier Pochon, Interactional Perspectives on the Us of the Computer and on the Technological Development of a New Tool: The Case of Word Processing. 283 Human-machine interaction is an interindividual relationship mediated by a technological tool and consisting of an indirect dialogue between users and designers. This indirect dialogue has many of the same characteristics as any other communication between individuals [ characteristics like ambiguity, negotiation of meanings, different perspectives and assumptions ] , and it requires interpretation activity on the part of the user in order to understand the logic of the machine. This indirect dialogue results in a specific interactional space that arises out of the intersection between the technological qualities of the machine and the user’s own activities and skills. 284 The term ‘user’ in general is unclear: what is a user? Reminiscent of the debate concerning the notion of the epistemic subject in Piaget’s work. 288 Terezinha Nunes, What Organizes Our Problem-Solving Activities? Different systems of symbols pose different types of difficulties. 309 It is necessary to consider what kind of power the different tools for thought offer to users. Representational systems [ e.g. for numeration, measurement, mathematics, computer-commands etc] pose different types of difficulties for their learners and also afford different power as tools. Greater attention must be given to how systems of signs structure thinking and what systems are to be chosen as basic for everyone [ who wants to learn the basics of a specific field of interest ]. 385 Roger Säljö and Kerstin Bergqvist, Seeing the Light: Discourse and Practice in the Optics Lab. 386 The assumption that we perceive directly and by means of a simple registration of visual stimuli is a prominent component of Western lay and scientific conceptions of the process of seeing. In a sociocultural perspective (Wertsch, 1991), perception has to be accounted for in a radically different way. Retinal images and sensations are part of the picture, but they offer very few clues to the situated meaning of what is illustrated e.g. in a particular experiment. 387 There is no one-to-one correspondence between a stimulus and our interpretation of phenomena and events in the world. Constructivists assume that the perceiver and/or the biological substrate of the perceptual apparatus (including the brain) play a more active role in the construction of percepts (sc the outcome of perceptual processes). Sensations are what is produced by sense data out there in the physical world. Percepts are what we make of these [ sensations ] once they are processed (cf human-information-processing tradition) by the sensory organs and in the brain. 388 Seamon & Kanrick, 1992): the mind steps in and makes contact with the information – revealing a vision of the mind as an inner eye or humunculus with a kind of gate-keeping function. Different positions with respect to the relationship between experience and perception. E.g. Merleau Ponty’s phenomenological perspective. MP: the empiricist construction hides from ujs the cultural/human world. MP concentrates on human consciousness and the intentionality of experience. 389 Construe the relationship between human perception and sociocultural experience. S&B 's‘unit of analysis has to be one in which people are acting in situated practices. 390 Sociocultural experience is critical for what we are able to see. Experiments with non-Westerners (e.g. Toda people of India) showed how susceptibility to visual illusion cannot be explained by reference only to physiological phenomena but has to be related to culture. Luria (1976): the higher the level of formal education, the more likely the participants in his studies were to perceive [visual] illusions. 396 In the S&B observations students were not able to see something very distinctively ‘happening’, because of their lack of framework of conceptual interpretation. 402 Communities of practice offer a fixation of perspectives (Rommetveit, 1992) by means of discursive distinctions. We learn to see phenomena by reference to conceptual resources that originate in specialized communities in complex societies. Learning in such contexts implies appropriation of accounts of the world that are neither out there in the objects themselves nor in our brains. Consider the decisive role of the social distribution of different forms of knowledge in communicative practices in which specialized accounts and ways of construing phenomena are cultivated. Seifert, U, J.H. Kim & A. Moore (eds), Paradoxes of interactivity : perspectives for media theory, human-computer interaction, and artistic investigations, 2008 U. Seifert, The co-evolution of humans and machines – a paradox of interactivity. 9 ‘agency’/’interaction’: two fields of meaning: the idea of intentional human beings (social sciences) and the idea of effect (natural sciences). 10 humans interacting with computers > blurring of the difference between humans and computers. A more symmetrical relation, where machines are becoming the subject of interaction. Human evolution is interwoven with the use and development of tools and the workings of humans and computers is explained by the same scientific concepts. 11 Bunge: ‘action’ is ‘what thing x exterts on thing y’; ‘interaction’ is ‘what x and y exert upon each other’. 13 human-machine systems form an integrated system that increases the power of both humans and machines. ‘intelligence augmentation’ is the development of computerized tools that enhance human intelligence and improve its functioning. 14 socio-cultural interaction uses symbolization (as difference with physical or biological interaction). 18 Sherry Turkle (2005): The new questions are not about whether relational artifacts will really have intelligence and emotions but about what they evoke in their users.’ (..) ‘The question is not whether children will love their pet robots more than their real life pets or even their parents, but rather, what will loving come to mean.’ 19 cultural evolution: 100.000 BC tool use and language, 4000 BC invention of script, 1500 AD printing, 2000 AD digital technology, which operates in social realms of interaction, intelligence and communication. 20 Turkle (2005): ‘ get people thinking of a ‘decentered self’ – a self that is not a unitary, intentional agent. S. Krämer, Does the body disappear? A comment on computer generated spaces. 40 Virtualization is a possibility of interactivity with symbol structures. Semiotisation of the user is a precondition of acting in cyberspace. The user has to split up into a physical body (..) and a data body which, in virtual reality, acts as a symbol structure. ‘flesh body’ and ‘sign body’ correlate (..) and question for the modification of our conception of the body. The user has to assume a self-staged identity and split up into a real person and a virtual persona. W. Rammert, Where the action is. Distributed agency between humans, machines and programs. 63 Human Computer Interaction (HCI) asks for a more symmetrical and sophisticated concept of agency. 64 Talking trees, inviting nymphs, punishing gods, speaking oracles and helpful angels were banished since Enlightment, but now the number of ‘acting units’ increases again. 65 Development from active humans and passive objects to interactivity between heterogeneous sources of activities (instrumental causality > interactive contingency). Actions are fragmented into myriads of pro-active and cooperative agents, mimicking human agency and interpersonal actions. Actions emerge out of a hybrid mix of agencies like humans, machines and programs. From a dual concept of human actions and machine’s operations to a gradual concept of distributed agency. Distributed agency: many loci of agency, not one actor; hybrid mix of humans, machines and programs as research unit; integration in ‘framed interactivity’ (between hierarchy (rule-determined systems) and autonomy (open systems)). 67 Aspects of technological change: motor (from stationary gadget to mobile agent); actuator (from passive instrument to pro-active agent); sensor (from blind machine to context-sensitive agent); processor (from hard-wired artifact to programmed agent); communicator (from single apparatus to cooperating agent). 69 Technical objects developed from passive (hammer) > semi-active (record-player) > re-active (adaptive heating system) > pro-active (car stabilisation) > co-operative (mobile robots). 70 Inter-Agency developed from instrumentality to interactivity. WR distinguishes 3 types of inter-agency: interaction (between human actors); intra-activity (between technical agents); interactivitiy (between humans and objects, cf ‘interface’). 72 Latour’s semiotics of actants cultivates a certain blindness towards observable actions and interactions and underrates processes of sense-making. Basing social theory in pragmatics may perhaps help to overcome such weakness. 73 Development from unmediated instrumental relations humans-machines to instructive-communicative relations people-objects. 74 The user is forced to conceive the relation as if an intelligent agent or partner were acting on the other side. WB distinguishes 3 different levels/grades of agency (vs Gidden’s three-level model of action and Latour’s flattened concept of agency (methodological and ontological symmetry)): causality (from action that exerts effects up to permanent re-structuring of actions), contingency (from selection of pre-selected options up to self-generation of actions) and intentionality (from ascription of simple dispositions up to guidance by complex semantics). 78 Illustration of distributed agency (from a single actor to many loci of agency): who/what is acting in the case of flying tourists to Tenerife. 79 Social scientists would focus on the people’s side, engineers would emphasise the role of machines and programs. 80 From ‘agency ex nihilo’ (the actor as creator) to ‘agency in media res’ (actions can be reconstructed out of the many activities before and around the focused action). Complex systems encapsulate many planned intra-activities and some unforseen interferences, which require interactivity for their control. 81 From homogeneous agency to hybrid constellations. Strong interdepency between the material and the social (cf Tavistock’s socio-technical systems). 82 It makes sense to analyse hybrid constellations as heterogeneous networks of of activities and interactivities. 83 A hybrid constellation also can be called a ‘collective agency’. 2 modes of integration of actions: hierarchical (effective for fixed inputs, routine processing, stable environments) and interactive (effective for changing inputs, many variations in processes, dynamic environments). 84 Break with the hierarchical mode in distributed computing (Rumelhart/McClelland, 1986), social computing (Hewitt, 1977, Star, 1989), socionics (Rammert, 1998, Meister et al. 2007), distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1996). Distributed processes do not require functional specialisation, pre-programmed fixed rules or hierarchical integration, but show integration as a natural process of loose coupling, overlapping activities, experimental adaptation and a step-by-step stabilisation of a common frame for the interactions (Hutchins, 1996). 85 WB > distributed agence, e.g. navigation as interaction of many distributed actions. This kind of distribution can also be transferred to computer operations, participating in the action. In the interactive mode of integration (‘framed interactivity’) the technological units are given more freedom of choice and higher levels of agency in order to enrich their capacity of assistance and to strengthen their role as relatively autonomous agents. F. Nake, Surface, Interface, Subface. Three cases of interaction and one concept. 95 3 subject-object-relations: tool-relation, symbolic representation (language – semiotic layer), reciprocal interaction. R. Kaehr, Double Cross Playing Diamonds. Understanding interactivity in/between bigraphs and diamonds. [ Kaehr’s website ] 111 R. Milner’s (2005, 2006, 2007) bigraph theory of interaction is presupposing homogenity and openness. Its basic operation is composition in the sense of category theory. 112 RK’s diamond model is based on an antidromic and parallactic structure of combination of events in an open/closed world of a multitude of discontextural universes. Diamonds are involving bi-objects belonging at once to categories and saltatories, ruled by composition and saltistition (jump-operation). The diamond model has 3 features: 1 the idea of irreducible multi-medial contextures and their qualitative incomparability (sound, video, text as logically different and distributed conceptually in a heterarchical sense); 2 the possibility of mapping the (outer) environment of a contexture (media) in itself – inner environment for reflectionality (contextures ( unlike systems) have to reflect their environment in their own domain) ; 3 the possibility of actions and complementary counter-actions on a basic level of conceptualisation and formalisation. 113 Interactionality is not primarily about topological movement (from one place to another), but about how we move by interaction from one medium to another medium [sound – text - video] of a complex knowledge space. The diamond model is not opting for a principally homogeneous global field of informational and physical events, but for a discontexturality of different media, situations and contexts of meaning. Common to both models [bigraph and diamond] is their dual, complementary and orthogonal approach to interaction. Milner’s model is focussed on message passing, RK’s diamond model on agents and their reflectional/interactional activities. In Milner’s bigraph model the metaphorical space of [computer] algorithms is mixed with the space of physical reality. Bigraphical reactive systems are a model of information flow in which both locality (of sender, message, agent and receiver) and connectivity are prominent. These concepts [locality and connectivity] are treated independently ( e.g. orthogonally [forming a right angle in a vector space, distributed over two dimensions] ). 115 The aim of the model is a theory that guides the specification, design and programming of systems and to guide future adaptations of them. E.g. model the internet: where you are (locality) is independent of whom you can talk to (connectivity). 116 Bigraph as a combination of place graphs and link graphs. 118 Milner (2004) presented the categorical, link, place and node axioms as sound and complete. [ nodes may represent different kinds of informatic entity: a physical location, an administrative region, a human agent, a mobile phone, a computer, a sensor, a data constructor, a _-calculus input guard, a mobile ambient, a cryptographic key, a message, a replicator, a biochemical molecule, a cell membrane, and so on ] The place axioms say that join is commutative, has a unit and is associative; the link axioms say that the formation of links obeys obvious rules; the node axiom says that we can name ports arbitrarily. The completeness of this axiom system depends on 1 that all linking can be exposed at the outermost level of an expression, 2 that we have a strict symmetric monoidal category of bigraphs with a bifunctiorial tensor that is partial on objects. In the bigraph model spaciality (structural locality) is conceived as static, formalised by category theory and behaviour(al connectivity) as dynamic, formalised by process calculi (pi-calculi). RK phrases this as ‘Everything in this world is changing but the world in which everything is changing doesn’t change’. The bigraph model presupposes an epistemologically uniform, homogeneous and unique world of physical and informational events. Kaehr’s diamond theory is turning to a world model where there are many worlds in which things are changing and in which worlds themselves are changing too. Messages in the diamond model are conceived as polycontextural and as belonging simultaneously to different contextures of irreducible kinds of meaning. In this pluriversal world-model [message-]keys are always polysemic and its acceptance has to be negotiated by reflectional and interactional activities. 120 RK proposes an interventional design: from interactions to a design of interactionality, from global to pluriversal contexturality, from locality to positionality of contextures, from mobility to metamorphosis between contextures, from operations to operationality in polycontextural situations, from connectivity to mediation between contextures, 121 from mail model of interaction in bigraphs to encounter model of interactionality/reflectionality and intervention. Interactivity in the encounter-model is conceived as a mutual action of acceptance and rejection between different agents. This simultaneity of inner and outer environments of agents involves a kind of structural bifurcation and mutual actions of acceptance and/or rejection of the involved agents. The actual structure of interactionality is not only bipartide but antidromic too [ antidromic = going in the reverse direction, the normal orthodromic impulse goes from soma along the axon ]. 122 Intervention = interaction + reflection on the behaviour of a partner-agent, intended to change the meta-rules of the partner-agent in order to stay in the game of computation and interaction. 122ff formalisation of the diamond model. 131 Interactionality as an intra-contextural interplay occurs in elementary diamonds in forms of duality, complementarity, bridging and distributivity. 132 Loefgren’s linguistic complementarity: in no language the process of interpretation can be completely described within the language itself. Argument: the terms of a language are finite and changeless, whereas their possible interpretations are infinite and changing. Bridging is an operation to knot two realms together, the categorical and the saltatorical. Situated Cognition : all knowledge is situated in activity bound to physical, social and cultural contexts. Knowledge exists, in situ, inseparable from context, [inter]activity, people, culture, and language. Therefore, learning is seen in terms of an individual's increasingly effective performance across situations rather than in terms of an accumulation of knowledge. J. J. Gibson (1977) introduced the idea of affordances [potential interactions with the environment ] as part of a relational account of perception. Perception should not be considered solely as the encoding of environmental features into the perceiver's mind, but as an element of an individual's interaction with her environment. Shaw, Turvey, & Mace (as cited by Greeno, 1994) later introduced the term effectivities, the abilities of the agent that determined what the agent could do, and consequently, the interaction that could take place. Representations are not stored and checked against past knowledge, but are created and interpreted in [inter]activity (Clancey, 1990). The agent directly perceives and interacts with the environment, determining what affordances can be picked up, based on his effectivities, and does not simply recall stored symbolic representations. Knowing is reciprocally co-determined between the agent and environment (Barab & Roth, 2006). This reciprocal interaction can not be separated from the context and its cultural and historical constructions (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Knowing emerges as individuals develop intentions (Young, 1997) through goal-directed activities within cultural contexts. In situated theories, the term "representation" refers to external forms in the environment that are created through social interactions to express meaning (language, art, gestures, etc.) and are perceived and acted upon in the first person sense. Reflective representation is considered to be a secondary type of learning, while the primary form of learning is found in the "adaptive recoordination that occurs with every behavior" (Clancey, 1993). Conceptualizing is considered to be a "prelinguistic" act, while "knowing" involves creative interaction with symbols in both their interpretation and use for expression. Embodied cognition - An example of embodied cognition is seen in the area of robotics, where movements are not based on internal representations, rather, they are based on the robot’s direct and immediate interaction with its environment (Wilson, 2002). Critiques of situated cognition: Vera and Simon (1993) claimed that the information processing view is supported by many years of research in which symbol systems simulated "broad areas of human cognition" and that that there is no evidence of cognition without representation. Anderson, Reder and Simon summarized what they considered to be the four claims of situated learning and argued against each claim from a cognitivist perspective. The claims and their arguments were: 1. Claim: Activity and learning are bound to the specific situations in which they occur. Argument: Whether learning is bound to context or not depends on both the kind of learning and the way that it is learned. 2. Claim: Knowledge does not transfer between tasks. Argument: There is ample evidence of successful transfer between tasks in the literature. Transfer depends on initial practice and the degree to which a successive task has similar cognitive elements to a prior task. 3. Claim: Teaching abstractions is ineffective. Argument: Abstract instruction can be made effective by combining of abstract concepts and concrete examples. 4. Claim: Instruction must happen in complex social contexts. Argument: Research shows value in individual learning and on focusing individually on specific skills in a skill set. Shibutani, T., Society and Personality. An Interactionst Approach to Social Psychology, 1961 9 The preoccupation with perfecting technical apparatus is much like concentrating all one’s efforts upon polishing his glasses rather than putting them on in order to see. 10 The systematic study of human behavior, at present, is in some respects like mathematics before Euclid. 11 The growth of scientific knowledge has been a cumulative movement, starting with common sense and becoming more reliable with the progressive elimination of errors. 12 Social psychology converged from psychology, anthropology, sociology and psychiatry. Psychology centered on perception, memory and thinking, learning and personality development (largely ignoring the social context). 13 But what is seen is strongly influenced by the reports of other people (cf psychological experiments with the autekinetic effect of a light in the dark). Sociologists focused on regularities in the formation, maintenance and dissolution of groups (as consisting of the interaction of human beings with each other). 14 Primacy of activity (rather than searching for substances of which the human mind is composed), perception and cognition are seen as types of behavior, processes, how things work. Various patterns of interaction were viewed as collective adjustments to life conditions. Anthropologists were concerned with the description of culture: customs, kinship systems, artifacts. 15 Psychiatrists with therapeutic measures for the mentally ill, often due to organic disturbance, 16 Freud: also unconscious emotional reactions, some personality disorders as products of disturbances in interpersonal relations. The individual was seen as a participant in some kind of social context. 17 Focus on what people (individually and collectively) do – an ‘action frame of reference’. 19 It’s unlikely that reliable generalizations can be formulated about acts that are superficially similar but basically different [ very different reasons for the same behavior ]. Also faulty concepts. 20 Many of the things men do, take a certain form not so much from instincts as from the necessity of adjusting to their fellows. Social psychology is looking for regularities in human behavior that arise out of the fact that men are participants in social groups. 22 TS point of view: the interactionist approach. Human nature and the social order are products of communication. Behavior is not regarded merely as a response to environmental stimuli, an expression of inner organic need, nor a manifestation of cultural patterns. 23 The direction taken by a person’s conduct is seen as something that is constructed in the reciprocal give and take of interdependent men who are adjusting to one another. A man’s personality is regarded as developing and being reaffirmed from day to day in his interaction with his associates. The culture of a group is viewed as consisting of models of appropriate conduct that emerge in communication and are continually reinforced as people jointly come to terms with life conditions. 24 TS vs cause/effect explanations which tend to single out event(s) from a complicated context – a cause/effect approach is an antrhopomorphic projection on the universe of the notion of responsible agency, an impression that emerges from uniquely human experiences. The interactionist approach is an explanatory model that resembles field theory in physics and the organismic approach in biology, Gestalt movement in psychology and pragmatism in philosophy. 25 Attention directed to the characteristics of the various [sub]systems – each having its distinctive properties only by virtue of its participation in a larger context. TS’s approach attempts to account for the things that men do in terms of the properties of five functional units – act, meaning, role, person and group. Suchman, L.A., Plans and situated actions : the problem of human-machine communication, 1987 All activity, even the most analytic, is fundamentally concrete and embodied. Actions are primarily situated, and that situated actions are essentially ad hoc. 2 Psychological processes (cognitive, located inside the head of the actor, including the formation of beliefs, desires, intentions and the like), social processes (interactional, circumstantial, located in the relationships among actors, and between actors and their embedding situations). Question: what constitutes purposeful action and how is it understood? 3 Artifacts, built on the planning model, confuse plans with situated actions, and recommend instead a view of plans as formulations of antecedent conditions and consequences of action that account for action in a plausible way. Interaction/communication between humans and machines. 7 The description of computational artifacts as interactive is supported by their reactive, linguistic and internally opaque properties. Conveying the artifact’s intended purpose to the user and establishing the intelligence, or rational accountability, of the artifact itself. 8 Coginitive science: mentalist constructs such as beliefs, desired, intentions, symbols, ideas, schemata, planning and problem-solving. 9 The cognitivist strategy is to interject a mental operation between invironmental stimulus and behavioral response. The relation between environmental stimuli – mental states – behavior is problematic. 11 The means for controlling computing machines and the behavior that results are increasingly linguistic, rather than mechanistic. 14 problems of organizing and using the range of world knowledge possessed by a human – systems only comprehend a small amount of specific input. 15 We have the tendency to ascribe full intelligence on the basis of partial evidence. Dennett (1978): our mutual opacity makes intentional explanations so powerful in the interpretation of human actions > the opacity of the computer invites an intentional stance. 17 The goal is that the artifact should not only be intelligible to the user as a tool, but that it should be intelligent – that is, able to understand the actions of the users, and to provide for the rationality of its own. 21 imbue the machine with the grounds for behaving in ways that are accountably rational: that is, reasonable or intelligible to others, including, in the case of interaction, ways that are responsive to the other’s actions. 3 Plans. 27 There are two views of action: 1 locates the organization and significance of human action in underlying plans. 2 states that the prescriptive significance of intentions for situated action is inherently vague; the coherence of situated action is tied to local interactions contingent on the actor’s particular circumstances. ch 3 is about the planning model. 28 According to the planning model actions are described by their preconditions and their consequences; 29 the plan is prerequisite to the action. 33 Difficulty: the uncertain relation between actions and intended effects (cf Allen, 1984). 36 Boden (1973): plans as prescriptions or instructions for action. 39 Austin (1962): language as a form of action, as a way of subsuming communication to the planning model. 41 Searle (1969) ‘s ‘conditions of satisfaction’ state conventions governing the illocutionary force of certain classes of utterances, but he argues against the possibility of a rule-based semantics for constructing the significance of any particular utterance. 42 Neither typifications of intent nor general rules for its expression are sufficient to account for the mutual intelligibility of our situated action. Attempts fo construct a taxonomy of intentions and rules for their recognition seem to beg the question of situated interpretations, rather than answer it. 43 Human behavior is a figure defined by its ground > turn from the observation of behavior to explication of the background that seems to lend behavior its sense. For cognitive science, the background of action is not the world as such, but knowledge about the world. Schank and Abelson (1977) classify the everyday world as types of situations and assign to each its own body of specialized knowledge – organized by scripts (predetermined, stereotyped sequences of actions that define a well-known situations) – there are numerous scripts. 44 While plans associate intentions with action sequences, scripts associate action sequences with typical situations. 47 Garfinkel (1972) there is reason to question the view that background assumptions are part of the actor’s mental state prior to action. 4 Situated actions. 50 every course of action depends in essential ways upon its material and social circumstances. 5 propositions: 1 plans are representations of situated actions, 2 representation occurs when activity becomes in some way problematic, 3 the objectivity of the situations of our action is achieved rather than given, 4 language is the central source for achieving objectivity (language indexically related to the circumstances it presupposes, produces and describes), 5 mutual intelligibility is achieved on each occasion of interaction with reference to situation particulars, rather than being discharged once and for all by a stable body of shared meanings. ad 1 52 Plans are resources for situated actions, but do not in any strong sense determine its course. Our post hoc analysis of situated action make it appear to have followed a rational plan, bu this says more about the nature of our analysis than it does about our situated actions. ad 3 57 Mead (): interaction is a condition for the social world , while that social world is a condition for intentional action. The notion that we act in response to an objectively given social world is replaced by the assumption that our everyday social practices render the world publicly available and mutually intelligible. The source of mutual intelligibility is not a received conceptual scheme, or a set of coercive rules or norms, but those common practices that produce the typifications of which schemes and rules are made. 58 Our common sense of the social world is not the precondition for our interaction, but its product. The objective reality of social facts is not the fundamental principle of social studies, but its fundamental phenomenon. ad 4 58 Expressions that rely upon their situation for significance are commonly called indexical (cf Pierce, 1933, e.g. I, you, here, now as exemplary indexicals). 60 We always mean more than we can say in just so many words. All situated language, including the most abstract or eternal, stands in an essential indexical relationship to the embedding world. Mainly a world ‘taken for granted’ (Schutz, 1962). Searle (1972): the truth conditions of an assertion are always relative to a background, and the background does not form part of the semantic content of the sentence as such. The background assumptions cannot be implemented in a system by enummeration of the assumed knowledge, because there is no fixed set of assumptions that underlies a given statement. 62 Garfinkel (1967,22): To treat instructions as though ad hoc features in their use was a nuisance, or to treat their presence as grounds for complaining about the imcompleteness of instructions, is very much like complaining that if the walls of a building were gotten out of the way, one could see better what was keeping the roof up. ad 5 63 The stability of the social world is not the consequence of a ‘cognitive consensus or stable body of shared meanings, but of our tacit use of the documentary method of interpretations to find the coherence of situations and actions. 64 There are no logical formulae for recognizing the intent of some behavior independent of context, and there are no recognition algorithms for joining contextual particulars to behavioral descriptions so that forms of intent can be precisely defined over a set of necessary and sufficient observational data (cf Coulter, 1983). 65 Weizenbaum (DOCTOR program) / Garfinkel’s experiments > the intelligence of interactions with e.g. the DOCTOR program is due to the work of the human participant – specifically to methods for interpreting the system’s behavior as evidence for some underlying intent. There is an ‘underlying’ reality of psychological and social facts in human interaction, prior to situated action and interpretation. 66 Garfinkel: the situations are, in any calculable sense, unknown, vague, modified, elaborated, extended, if not indeed created by the fact and the matter of being addressed. Stability of the social world is due to situated actions that create and sustain shared understanding on specific occasions of interaction. Actions are not determined by rules, but actors use rules that are available to produce significant actions. 67 Structure is an emergent product of situated action, rather than its foundation. 5 Communicative resources. 69 The local, interactional work produces intelligibility in situ. The starting premise is that interpreting the significance of action is an essentially collaborative achievement. 72 Conversation is seen as ‘ensemble’ work, rather than the common notion of speaker stimulus and listener response. 75 What happens in a conversation at each possible turn-transition place is contingent on the actions of participants other than the speaker. 83 The interpretation of action relies upon the liberal application of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. 91 Rules for courtroom interaction, like those for everyday conversation, constitute a resource for social order, not a recipe or an explanation. 92 If a patient does not know the [diagnostic] plan of the physician, the patient’s cooperation is contingent on the physician’s actions, and so is the success of the interview. 95 Stable forms in talk are an orderliness wrested by the participants from interactional contingency, rather than automatic products of standardized plans. Form has to be seen as the distillated of action and interaction, not its blueprint (Schegloff, 1982). So there are limits on availalbe resources for accomplishing a shared agenda in a case of ‘interaction’ between people and machines. 109 Consider those fleeting circumstances that our interpretations of action systematically rely upon, but which our accounts of action routinely ignore. Mind the relation between interpretations of action and action’s circumstances. 113 Action has not only to be analyzed as the relation of intent to behavior, but as the relation of both to mitigating circumstances. There is an uncertain relation between accounts of the significance of action, and the observations and inferences on which those accounts must be based. 114 We lack a description of the structure of situated action. We cannot presuppose what are the relevant conditions, or their relationship to the structure of action – the structure lies in [develops in] a relation between action and its circumstances that we have yet to uncover. 115 How to find a sense of ‘shared understanding’ in human-machine communication. 7 Human-machine communication. 119 The significance of any action and the adequacy of its interpretation is judged indirectly, by response to actions taken, and by an interpretation’s usefulness in understanding subsequent actions. It is just this highly contingent process that we call interaction. 8 Conclusion. Insofar actions are always situated in particular social and physical circumstances, the situation is crucial to action’s interpretation (vs applied logic insofar it has taken abstract structural accounts as the ideal representational form). Not produce formal models of knowledge and actions, but explore the relation of knowledge and action to the particular circumstances in which knowing and acting invariably occur. Ground theories of action in empirical evidence. The organization of situated action is an emergent property of moment-by-moment interactions between actors, and between actors and the environments of their action. The emergent properties of action means that action is not predetermined, but neither is it [completely OBW] random. 180 Mutual intelligibility is always a product in situ, collaborative work. Communicative practices maximize sensitivity to particular participants on particular occasions of interaction. Resources for detecting and remedying troubles in understanding as part of communication’s fundamental organization. Communication is embedded in an unarticulated background of experiences and circumstances. Communication in this sense is not a symbolic process that happens to go on in real-world settings, but a real-world activity in which we make use of language to delineate the collective relevance of our shared environment. 181 Machines lack a lot of the linguistic, nonverbal and inferential resources humans have available in finding the intelligibility of actions and events – this asymmetry substantially limits the scope of interaction between people and machines. How to lessen this asymmetry by extending the access of the machine to the actions and circumstances of the user. How to make clear to the user the limits on the machine’s access to those basic interactional resources. How to compensate the machine with computationally available alternatives. 185 For situated action, the vagueness of plans is not a fault, but is ideally suited to the fact that the detail of intent and action must be contingent on the circumstantial and interactional particulars of actual situations (plans as representations, or abstractions over action). 188 The foundation of actions is not plans, but local interactions with our environment, more and less informed by references to abstract representations of situations and of actions, and more and less available to representations themselves. How are we able to bring efficient descriptions (such as plans) and particular circumstances into productive interaction. 189 As absurd it is to claim that a map controls the traveler’s movement through the world, it is wrong to imagine plans as controlling action. It is in the interaction of representation and represented where, so to speak, the action is. Thornborrow, J., Power talk: language and interaction in institutional discourse, 2002 2 Levinson (1992) states that talk in institutional settings differs from common talk in three respects: 1. it is goal or task oriented; 2. it involves constraints on what counts as legitimate contributions to that goal or task; 3.. it produces particular kinds of inferences in the way speakers interpret, or orient to, utterances. For Habermas, asymmetry [ in talk ] is much less a question of turn distribution between participants and much more one of unequal distribution of social power and status. 3 McElhinny (1997) suggests that institutional talk is better regarded as a cultural classification, an ideological label which will mean different things to different people. 4 JT – institutional talk is 1. talk that has differentiated, pre-inscribed and conventional participant roles, or identities. 2. talk in which there is a structurally asymmetrical distribution of turn types between the participants such that speakers with different institutional identities typically occupy different discursive identities, 3. talk in which there is also an asymmetrical relationship between participants in terms of speaker rights and obligations, 4. talk in which the discursive resources and identities available to participants to accomplish specific actions are either weakened or strengthened in relation to their current institutional identities. 5 What people do in institutional encounters, is produced, overall, as a result of an interplay between their interactional and discursive role and their institutional identity and status. 6 Social theories of power. From the behavioural perspective power was a matter of individual agency, residing in individuals rather than in organisations (Dahl, 1961). Lukes (1974) conceptualised power in a much more abstract way, as ideological and hegemonic. Althusser (1971) described power as a discursive phenomemon. Poststructuralist theories consider identities and subjectivities to be multiple and shifting rather than fixed within a particular ideological structuring, or hegemonic, view of the world. Bourdieu (1992) saw power as ‘symbolic capital’. Eckert/McConnell-Ginet (1992): communities of practice > power as practice. Foucault (1977,1980) moves towards a concept of power as a complex and continuously evolving web of social and discursive relations; it’s a ‘productive network which runs through the whole social body’ (1980,119). There are no relations of power without resistances and these resistances are formed right at the point where power is exercised (1980,142). 8 JT approaches power as a contextually sensitive phenomemon, as a set of resources and actions which are available to speakers and which can be used more or less successfully depending on who the speakers are and what kind of speech situation they are in. Gal (1992) suggested that ‘the strongest form of power may well be the ability to define social reality, to impose visions of the world. Such visions are inscribed in language and, most importantly, enacted in interaction’ (1992,160). 9 A study of America small claims court disputes found that ‘rule-oriented’ case-presentation fared better than ‘relational’ accounts. Social meanings are jointly produced by participants in talk, but talk is always grounded within a specific, local context. In institutional talk the identity of the speakers, their institutional roles and relationships are already established by the context. 10 From CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) JT takes the central premise that language is a social phenomenon and that language in use is inextrincably bound up with other social phenomena. JT adopts Foucault’s conceptualisation of the relationship between power and discourse. JT draws primarily on the analytical tools of CA (Conversation Analysis): language in interaction is fundamental to the production of social phenomena; through language as social action participants structure, organise, order and make sense of their experience of the world; talk is always both context shaping and context shaped. Goffman (1981,1983): how language provides us the rich resources with which we do so much of our interactional work. 13 Language study moved out of the domain of ‘langue’, where linguistic forms are decontextualized and treated as a cognitive, mental phenomenon, into the domain of ‘parole’, where language is regarded as a socially situated, discursive and therefore often an ideological phenomenon. 14 Critical linguistics analyses language as ‘text’ or ‘discourse’, rather than as decontextualized sets of possible sentences in the Chomskyan tradition. All perception involves theory or ideology and there are no ‘raw’ uninterpreted, theory-free facts. 15 One of the main problems with the critical linguistic approach to power was its limiting focus on grammatical and lexical choices. Mapping world view on to linguistic structure has been criticised as reductive, as well as analytically insensitive to the range of possible meanings that a text can display to different groups of readers. Subsequent research has drawn productively on the concept of variation and selection in grammatical and representational form fo explain how language can work to produce contrasting versions of reality from different ideological perspectives. Fairclough (1989,1992,1995): all forms of discourse are determined by sets of institutional conventions which are in turn shaped by wider social relations of power (1989,17). 16 F describes discourse as a ‘three-dimensional’ concept involving texts (the objects of linguistic analysis), discourse practices (the production, distribution and consumption of texts) and social practices (the power relations, ideologies and hegemonic struggles that discourses either reproduce, challenge or in some way restructure). 21 For F, all interaction is subject to the social and institutional constraints of the context in which it is produced, constraints that lead to the reproduction of existing relations of power and status. 22 CA has traditionally very little to say about the question of power in social interaction. Schlegoff (1991): that/how social roles and context play some crucial part in talk, cannot be assumed in any a priori way, but must be shown to be the case empirically from the data at hand. 24 Questions can be used as potentially powerful interactive resource. 25 Harris (1984): the predominance of conductive questioning in magistrates’ courts reinforces the power and status of the examining magistrate in relation to the answering defendant. 27 The ‘theory’ of a [court]case, sc the existence of contracts, obligations and facts relevant to those issues, were more likely to succeed than those whose accounts were centred on motivations, relationships and complex social problems. A legal, rule-oriented view of what constitutes reasonable evidence marginalises or discounts other reconstructions of events seen from a different perspective. Power as ‘territory’ – who gets to talk and how, gaining access to the discursive space. 28 Gender effects – men more frequently responding to topics introduced by other men. Turntaking in interaction between couples in their home, e.g. ‘no-response’, particularly by the men. Although women work harder to maintain interaction, they were less successful than the men. 30 Hierarchy and status are actively established through talk rather than being static social categories. Diamond (1996): power as the ability of a speaker to get his or her interpretation accepted by other speakers. 34 A way we often we become aware of a normative pattern in interaction, and of its conventional, contextual shape is by noticing a change, or disruption, to that pattern. Harris (1995): study empirical data on four components: propositional, inter-textual, contextual/historical and interactional. 35 Look in detail at the kinds of things that speakers do at a very local level, such as the organisation of turn-taking sequences, occupation of particular kinds of turn positions, and the accomplishment of certain kinds of conversational actions. 133 Three important analytic foci: the discursive identities set up during the talk event (e.g. questioner, formulator or opinion-giver), the institutional identities of participants inscribed in that event (e.g. phone-in-host, inverviewer) and the variable accessibility of different turn-types and discursive resources to those participants. 134 Turn-taking in institutional contexts is frequently distributed along quite structural lines, in terms of who occupies particular types of turns and interactional positions. Power relations in interaction are nog necessarily fixed, predetermined states of affairs, but are constantly shifting and being redefined between participants on a very local level. JT did not measure interactional power in quantitative terms (e.g. how much space taken in talk, whose topics taken up), but analyzed power relations on a very local discursive level. 135 Use of resources is bound up with both the structural constraints of the talk and the institutional identities of the participants. Asymmetry in access to different types of turns and discursive identities, and a corresponding asymmetry in speaker rights and obligations. 136 Power [in talk] construed as one participant’s ability to affect or influence what the next participant does in the next turn. 137 Power not as ‘owned, possessed or unequally distributed between social agents, but as a locally produced and analysable phenomenon in the social interaction between participants in talk in institutional settings. Watzlawick, P., J.H. Beavin, D.D. Jackson, Pragmatics of Human Communication. A study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes, 1968. ch1 The frame of reference. 21 Communication is subdivided into syntactics, semantics and pragmatics as interdependent areas. 22 From the perspective of pragmtics all behavior is communication. Research is focused on the observable patterns of relationships (conceptually close to mathematics) and interactions. 23 Especially the mathematical concept of function is usefull. Greek: numbers as concrete, real properties of real objects > geometry as measuring and counting. 24 1591 Vieta introduced letter-notations instead of numbers > the concept of variables > the concept of functions as relations between variables ( e.g. y2 = 4ax as comprising the properties of a curve). 27 Patterns of relationships can be perceived, and these [functions] are the essence of experience. 28 A process of change, motion or scanning is involved in all perception. 29 Communication is the concept of information exchange through organism-environment interaction. Cf kicking a stone with kicking a dog – the difference of behavior shows a conceptual shift from energy to information. 30 Cybernetics brought together the concepts of determinism and teleology into a more comprehensive framework – which became possible through the discovery of feedback (= bringing part of the system’s output back into the system as information about the [effects of the] output . 31 Negative feedback (bringing a system back to stability or equilibrium), positive feedback (leading to change). Interactional systems may be viewed as feedback loops. 34 If a system stores previous adaptations for future use, the processes of that system show stochasticity, redundancy or constraint ( = repeating patterns, pattern formation ). 39 Pragmatic redundancy of behavioral phenomena reveal a suggestive analogy with the mathematical concept of calculus [ formal structure & rules > consistent behavior ]. 46 Communication patterns are circular (vs idea of causal chains and vs a faulty logic that would point at the start or end of a communication (circle) ). ch 2 Some tentative Axioms of Communication: 51 One cannot not communicate. 54 Every communication has a content and a relationship aspect such that the latter classefies the former and is therefore a metacommunication. ( content = what we say and relation = how we see each other - cf computer information (the data) and information about this information (instructions [ methods that handle information ] )). 59 The nature of a relationship is contingent upon the punctiation of the communication sequences between the communicants. ( the sequence of interchanges can be split up differently, e.g. husband: I withdraw because my wife nags, wife: I nag because my husband withdraws – inability to communicate about their respective patterning of their interaction. cf a mathematical analogy of infinite, oscilating series, like S = a – a + a – a + a – a + a – a + a - ..... and Bolzano’s Paradoxes of the Infinite, splitting up the series differently into S = (a – a) + (a – a ) + (a – a ) + (a – a ) + ... which yields S = 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 ... = 0, or S = a – ( a – a ) – ( a – a ) – ( a – a ) - ... which yields S = a – 0 – 0 – 0 ... = a, or S = a – (a – a + a – a + a – a + a – a + a - ....) which yields S = a – S, which yields 2S = a, which yields S = 0.5a). 66 Communication is both digitally and analogically. Digital language [ e.g. propositions, the content aspects ] has a complex and powerful logical syntax but lacks adequate semantics in the field of relationships, while analogic language [ eg vocalizations, intention movements, mood signs ] possesses the semantics but has no adequate syntax for the unambiguous definition of the nature of relationships. 70 All communicational interchanges are either symmetrical (mirroring each others behavior) or complementary [ e.g. assertive-submissive, up-down, superior-inferior) , depending on whether they are based on equality or difference. ch 4 The Organization of Human Interaction. 119 Interaction can be considered as a system. 120 objects are the components or parts of the system, attributes are the properties of the system and relationships tie the system together. 121 Interactional systems are two or more communicants in the process of, or at the level of, defining the nature of their relationship. For a given system, the environment is the set of all objects a change in whose attributes affect the system and also those objects whose attributes are changed by the behavior of the system. 122 Open systems exchange materials, energies or information with their environment. 123 The functional units [ of the interactional system ] act as a whole when facing downwards, as parts when facing upwards ( sc an integrated hierarchy of semiautonomous sub-wholes). Formal properties of open systems: wholeness, nonsummativity (not the sum of its parts), feedback and circularity, equifinality (behavior not determined so much by initial conditions as by the nature of the process or the system parameters – the system parameters dominate over the initial conditions). 134 Mach: in nature there is no law of refraction, only different cases of refraction. The law of refraction is a concise compendious rule, devised by us for the mental reconstruction of a fact, and only for its reconstruction in part, that is, on its geometrical side (1919, 485/6). ch 6 Paradoxical Communication. 188 Paradox defined as a contradiction that follows correct deduction from consistent premises. 189 Antinomy (also paradox, but mostly limited to logic and mathematics). Or more precise (Stegmüller): antinomy as a statement that is both contradictory and provable. 3 types of paradoxes: 1 logico-mathematical (antinomies), 2 paradoxical definitions (semantical), 3 pragmatic paradoxes (paradoxical injunctions and paradoxical predictions). ad 1 e.g. ‘the class of all classes which are not members of themselves’, Russell: confusion of logical types or levels. ad 2 e.g. ‘I am lying’ – confusion of object-language and meta-language. ad 3 e.g. Chicago is a populous city and a trisyllabic. Confusion of reference to object and reference to word. ‘Be spontaneous!’, ‘I want you to dominate me’, ‘Don’t be so obedient!’ (injunctions putting in an untenable position). 212 Double bind: intense relation, message asserts something + asserts something about its own assertion, both assertions are mutually exclusive, the recipient cannot step outside the frame set by the message > vicious-circle system. cf Pavlovian experiment dog trained to discriminate between ellips and circle (correct > food), then ellipse gradually expanded to look more and more like a circle (the dog showing disordered behavior, comatose, violent, severe anxiety). 217 The paradoxical injunction bankrupts choice itself, nothing is possible and a selfperpetuating oscillating series is set in motion. Possible reactions: 1 looking for vital clues to force reasonable meaning, 2 comply with all injunctions with complete literalness and abstain from independent thinking (e.g. army life?), 3 withdraw from human involvement. Paradoxical prediction, e.g. you will have an unexpected examination next week [ the predicted examination will be unpredictable ]; e.g. thrustworthy husband saying: ‘If you don’t stop your vice (drinking, smoking), I’ll start my own (adultery)’. > husband deciding not to, but wife extremely jealous. The husband’s anouncement created a context that was untenable. 226 Prediction (future outcomes) is always connected with trust. 227 Prisoner’s dilemma – abstract representation of a problem encountered over and over again in marriage psychotherapy. 259 Existence as a function of the relationship between the organism and its environment. 260 Knowledge of things (first-order), knowledge about things (second-order), meaningful premises for one’s existence, one’s way of being-in-the-world (third-order knowledge). 264 We seem to be ill equiped to deal with inconsistencies which threaten third-order premises (cf double bind). Questioning meaning not in its semantic but in its existential connotation. 266 Existential despair is the painful discrepance between what is and what should be, between one’s perceptions and one’s third-order premises. Third-order premises only can be changed from a fourth level: the area of intuition and empathy – what brings about change at the third-order level. 267 cf the metamathematical proof theory: problems that are decidable or undecidable (e.g. p is provable from the premises and axioms of the system, but p proclaims of itself to be unprovable > formal systems are incomplete – the consistency of a system cannot be proven within the system). 271 cf Wittgenstein: the world is finite and limitless (there is nothing outside that together with the inside could form a boundary). Within the limits meaningful questions can be asked and answered. But the solution to the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. [ but there was nothing outside, so ... ] Nothing inside the frame can state or even ask anything about that frame. For an answer which cannot be expressed, the question too cannot be expressed. The solution is not the finding of an answer for the riddle of existence, but the realization that there is no riddle, which means the vanishing of the problem. The inexpressible shows itself. Wilson, M., Six Views of Embodied Cognition, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2002, 9 (4), 625-636 W distinguishes and evaluates the following six claims: (1) cognition is situated; (2) cognition is time-pressured; (3) we off-load cognitive work onto the environment; (4) the environment is part of the cognitive system; (5) cognition is for action; (6) offline cognition is body based (..) Proponents of embodied cognition take as their theoretical starting point not a mind working on abstract problems, but a body that requires a mind to make it function. (..) Early sources include the view of 19th century psychologists that there was no such thing as "imageless thought" (Goodwin, 1999); motor theories of perception such as those suggested by William James and others (see Prinz, 1987, for a review); the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget, which emphasized the emergence of cognitive abilities out of a groundwork of sensorimotor abilities; and the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson, which viewed perception in terms of affordances— potential interactions with the environment. In the 1980s, linguists began exploring how abstract concepts may be based on metaphors for bodily, physical concepts (e.g., Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). At the same time, within the field of artificial intelligence, behaviorbased robotics began to emphasize routines for interacting with the environment rather than internal representations used for abstract thought (see, e.g., Brooks, 1986). (..) Among the most prominent claims are the following: 1. Cognition is situated. Cognitive activity takes place in the context of a real-world environment, and it inherently involves perception and action. 2. Cognition is time pressured. We are "mind on the hoof " (Clark, 1997), and cognition must be understood in terms of how it functions under the pressures of real-time interaction with the environment. 3. We off-load cognitive work onto the environment. Because of limits on our information-processing abilities (e.g., limits on attention and working memory), we exploit the environment to reduce the cognitive workload. We make the environment hold or even manipulate information for us, and we harvest that information only on a need-to-know basis. 4. The environment is part of the cognitive system. The information flow between mind and world is so dense and continuous that, for scientists studying the nature of cognitive activity, the mind alone is not a meaningful unit of analysis. 5. Cognition is for action. The function of the mind is to guide action, and cognitive mechanisms such as perception and memory must be understood in terms of their ultimate contribution to situation-appropriate behavior. 6. Off-line cognition is body based. Even when decoupled from the environment, the activity of the mind is grounded in mechanisms that evolved for interaction with the environment—that is, mechanisms of sensory processing and motor control. Evaluation of these claims Claim 1: Cognition Is Situated Simply put, situated cognition is cognition that takes place in the context of task-relevant inputs and outputs. That is, while a cognitive process is being carried out, perceptual information continues to come in that affects processing, and motor activity is executed that affects the environment in task-relevant ways. VS Even with this basic definition of what it means for cognition to be situated, we can note that large portions of human cognitive processing are excluded. Any cognitive activity that takes place "off-line," in the absence of taskrelevant input and output, is by definition not situated. [OBW Why should ‘off-line’ cognition be as well ‘non-situated coginition’? The mental and conceptual domains could be regarded well as participating in different types of interactions; e.g. if one would program a computer to carry out a specific computation in an endless loop, still situated interactions are going on on different levels.] Claim 2: Cognition is Time Pressured It is frequently stated that situated agents must deal with the constraints of "real time" or "runtime" - situated cognition must cope with time pressure. One reason that time pressure is thought to matter is that it creates what has been called a "representational bottleneck". A debate has raged over whether a situated cognizer would make use of internal representations at all; the assumption that we have solved it is disputable - we very often do not successfully cope with the representational bottleneck. Given the opportunity, we often behave in a decidedly off-line way: stepping back, observing, assessing, planning, and only then taking action. Claim 3: We Off-Load Cognitive Work Onto the Environment Two types of strategies appear to be available when one is confronting on-line task demands. The first is to rely on preloaded representations acquired through prior learning. The second option, which is to reduce the cognitive workload by making use of the environment itself in strategic ways—leaving information out there in the world to be accessed as needed. Claim 4: The Environment Is Part of the Cognitive System A stronger claim: that cognition is not an activity of the mind alone, but is instead distributed across the entire interacting situation, including mind, body, and environment. Science is not ultimately about explaining the causality of any particular event. Instead, it is about understanding fundamental principles of organization and function. Distributed causality, then, is not sufficient to drive an argument for distributed cognition. Is it most natural, most scientifically productive, to consider the system to be the mind; or the mind, the body, and certain relevant elements in the immediate physical environment, all taken together? To help us answer this question, it will be useful to introduce a few additional concepts regarding systems and how they function. First, a system is defined by its organization—that is, the functional relations among its elements. These relations cannot be changed without changing the identity of the system. Next, systems can be described as either facultative or obligate. Facultative systems are temporary, organized for a particular occasion and disbanded readily. Obligate systems, on the other hand, are more or less permanent, at least relative to the lifetime of their parts. A strong view of distributed cognition—that a cognitive system cannot in principle be taken to comprise only an individual mind—will not hold up. Claim 5: Cognition Is for Action Consider cognitive mechanisms in terms of their function in serving adaptive activity. visual perception: argued that the dorsal stream is more properly thought of as a "how" [rather than ‘what’ and ‘where’] pathway. The proposed function of this pathway is to serve visually guided actions such as reaching and grasping. Glenberg (1997) argues that the traditional approach to memory as "for memorizing" needs to be replaced by a view of memory as "the encoding of patterns of possible physical interaction with a three-dimensional world". Although the "how"-system of perceptual processing appears to be for action, the very existence of the "what" system suggests that not all information-encoding works this way. The ventral stream of visual processing does not appear to have the same kind of direct links to the motor system that the dorsal stream does. Instead, the ventral stream goes about identifying patterns and objects. An alternative view is that cognition often subserves action via a more indirect, flexible, and sophisticated strategy, in which information about the nature of the external world is stored for future use without strong commitments on what that future use might be. Our mental representations, whether novel and sketchy or familiar and detailed, appear to be to a large extent purpose-neutral, or at least to contain information beyond that needed for the originally conceived purpose. And this is arguably an adaptive cognitive strategy. Claim 6: Off-Line Cognition Is Body Based Mental structures that originally evolved for perception or action appear to be co-opted and run "off-line," decoupled from the physical inputs and outputs that were their original purpose, to assist in thinking and knowing. Sensorimotor simulations of external situations are in fact widely implicated in human cognition, e.g. in mental imagery, working memory, episodic memory, implicit memory, reasoning and problem-solving. One benefit of greater specificity is the ability to distinguish on-line aspects of embodied cognition from off-line aspects. The former include the arenas of cognitive activity that are embedded in a task-relevant external situation. Off-line aspects of embodied cognition, in contrast, include any cognitive activities in which sensory and motor resources are brought to bear on mental tasks whose referents are distant in time and space or are altogether imaginary. These include symbolic off-loading, where external resources are used to assist in the mental representation and manipulation of things that are not present, as well as purely internal uses of sensorimotor representations, in the form of mental simulations. In these cases, rather than the mind operating to serve the body, we find the body (or its control systems) serving the mind. Notes OBW Het personaliseren en socialiseren van ‘reflexible eventities’ is vooralsnog indirect en metaforisch. Indirect omdat daarin de intelligentie van de makers en de gebruikers (hardwired & softwared) weerspiegeld wordt, metaforisch omdat het dan ook vooralsnog een ‘is-like-intelligence’ weerspiegelt. Charles Taylor, Het Poreuze Zelf. Secularisatie als ontwikkeling naar persoonlijke religie met allereerst een onttovering van de wereld van geesten en hogere krachten waarin onze voorouders leefden (Max Weber: Entzauberung). In de pre-moderne, betoverde wereld konden deze magische krachten de poreuze grens van het zelf doorbreken en invloed uitoefenen op het psychische en fysieke leven. In de moderniteit ontstaat een sterker besef van de grens tussen het zelf en de ander. Wel brengt dat het verlies van een zekere ontvankelijkheid [ OBW waarvoor precies? ] met zich mee. De Romantiek is te zien als poging om de wereld opnieuw te betoveren (bv magisch realisme). Voor het poreuze zelf geldt dat de bron van zijn krachtigste en belangrijkste emoties zich buiten de geest bevindt (vgl de zwarte gal die niet zozeer als oorzaak van melancholie wordt beschouwd, maar de melancholie is in de beleving van de pre-moderne mens). Het moderne, omsloten zelf heeft zich bevrijd van de angst voor de dingen die levendig in beeld worden gebracht op sommige schilderijen van Jeroen Bosch. Toch heeft Taylor het gevoel dat veel mensen met nostalgie terugkijken op de wereld van het poreuze zelf en het wegvallen van een emotionele band tussen zelf en kosmos als een verlies ervaren. Trouw, 16.5.2009 [ OBW door de toenemende personalisering van nieuwe technologie kan een ‘New Animism’ ontstaan – het (te) letterlijk nemen van de psycho-sociale rollen die nieuwe technologie kan spelen.] Peter-Paul Verbeek: De grens tussen fysis (natuur) en technè (ambachtelijke techniek > technologie) vervaagt. Het gaat om de kwaliteit van de verwevenheid van natuur en techniek. Het stellen van een grens tussen ‘therapie’ en ‘verbetering’ (zoals bv Habermas: therapie acceptabel, maar verbetering niet) biedt geen geschikte oriëntatie. We moeten onze verantwoordelijkheid nemen voor de vraag: wat willen we van de mens maken? Mensen worden zelf verantwoordelijk voor geboorte (pre-implantatie-diagnostiek) en dood (euthanasie) alsook voor de kwaliteit van hun leven (bv deep-brain-stimulation > effecten persoonlijkheid > andere opvattingen en keuzes). We kunnen vorm geven aan onszelf. De Übermensch is de mens die verantwoord met dat vermogen heeft leren omgaan. (inaugurele oratie, Trouw, 17.10.2009) Het onderzoeken van de effecten van iets wat nog niet bekend is (sc de nog door te ontwikkelen nieuwe technologie) op iets wat verondersteld wordt in nog sterkere mate dan nu al te differentiëren onder invloed van die nieuwe technologie (sc meervoudige identiteiten) is speculatief. De mogelijke zin ervan ligt zowel in het schetsen van de mogelijke winsten als tegenwicht tegen de techno-pessimisten enerzijds en de mogelijke risico’s als tegenwicht tegen de techno-optimisten anderzijds, er van uitgaande dat een analyse van die winsten en risico’s bijsturende invloed kan uitoefenen op de technologische ontwikkelingen en een kritische acceptatie daarvan. Interaction in terms of Stimulus &= Response: S[R] < == > R[S] example: the interdependent populations of foxes and rabbits user profiles in ‘access keys’ (as part of the script-processing) adaptations to user-responses > deterministic or creative effects? anticipations: user-info > predictions > influence on human behavior adaptation & anticipationg effects on autonomy, control and responsibility for info-processing? ii personalized and socialized .... (domain-divers) social identity as internalization of situated roles (Goffman), role of ‘reference groups’ (Mead) > ‘reference assemblages of technological artefacts’ (vdBerg) plurality of identities (‘team-play’ of different roles in one agent or merely a network of roles (Goffman)?) or one flowing, metamorphizing identity (role-switching)? what’s the difference? could the difference be proven? { anni(patterni) }1,2,3,....n > tech-activation / -inhibition |