Traditional views of knowledge are being challenged. An emerging “constructivist” perspective, as proposed by George Kelly, an engineer turned clinician, suggests that to a large degree we construct reality. In his “constructive alternativism” Kelly assumes that we validate our hypotheses and beliefs through subjectively construed goodness-of-fit criteria applied to perceived differences between anticipations and feedback. His model of construing is compatible with those emerging in the history and philosophy of science and in cognitive psychology. Nevertheless, constructivists must answer a perplexing question: How can fallible knowledge, constructed as it is from abstracted and incomplete representations of objects and events, capture and maintain our confidence, as it does, and furthermore prove highly functional, as it does?

This paper attempts to establish a systems-semiotic framework explaining creativity in the design process, where the design process is considered to have as its basis the cognitive process. The design process is considered as the interaction between two or more cognitive systems resulting in a purposeful and ongoing transformation of their already complex representational structures and the production of newer ones, in order to ful?ll an ill-defined goal. Creativity is considered as the result of an emergence of organizational complexity in each cognitive system participating in the design process, while it is trying to purposefully incorporate new constraints in its meaning structures. The meanings generated in each system are identi?ed as the contingent and anticipatory content of its representations, and where self-organization is the dominant process in which they are continuously involved. Furthermore, Peircean semiotic processes appear to provide the functionality needed by the emergent representational structures in order to complete the cycle of a creative design process. Creativity originates in the abductive stage of the semiotic process, the fallible nature of which is maintained in the proposed framework by the fact that the respective emergent representations can be mis?ts. The nodal points of the framework are identified and analyzed showing that a cognitive system needs the whole interactive anticipatory cycle in order to engage in a creative design process.

Key words: Anticipations, Creativity, Emergent Representations, Peircean Semiotic Processes, Self-organization

The present paper wants to show the extent to which prosody, or best, prosodies, as Firth (1948) put it, contribute in their own and specific ways to enaction, at various levels of operational closure. On the one hand prosodies (stress, accent, melody) are linked to speech and exchange in a non-escapable fashion, as opposed to gesture for example. Hearing speech implies hearing syllables, tones, intensity variations; it does not imply seeing face or gesture (though one may object the language-dependency of prosody – gesture pairings). Simon & Auchlin (2004) described the independent timings of parameters, such as pitch range, height and intensity, speech rate: the first two or three syllables of speech alone inform on speaker sex, age, mood, investment in speech, importance of speech for her, or intentionality; the meaning of the whole utterance is obtained much later, thus the first flow somehow frames the second which, in turn, may allow blending with previously accessed information. In that way, linguistic meaning incorporates prosodic manifestations. On the other hand, one of the most basic prosodic dimensions, namely speech rate (articulation rate + pauses) is properly speaking a shared dimension between speaker and hearer: no one can hear slowly, or more rapidly than the speaker speaks. Speech rate is properly un-escapable, or necessarily shared dimension in dialogue. Indeed, interpreting is constantly anticipating – but anticipations timing still depends upon speech rate. Note that speech rate is also un-escapable for the observer, provided (s) he enacts the discourse, turning herself into a participant in the piece of interaction (s) he wants to describe (Auchlin, 1999). Sharing the temporal grid, i. e. entering it, is essential to such now. Indeed, interactionists’ work (P. Auer, E. Couper-Kuhlen, F. Müller; M. Selting; J. Local, i. a.) precisely describe verbal interactions’’ ballet temporality. Yet, their descriptive claim, which constrains empirical work, deliberately rejects any kind of theoretical conclusion or generalization; and their need to '‘objectively’’ describe speech events firmly contradicts what is mandatory for the enactive approach, namely the epistemological experientialist turn, first posited by Lakoff & Johnson (1980). The present paper examines a couple of emblematic cases of prosodic enacting meaning experience that should contribute to grounding the concept, both on its epistemological and its empirical sides.

What is the main characteristic of constructive explanation? In other words, what is the nature of a construct and, consequently, what kind of relationship is there between constructs and behavior? Kelly stated that a “psychological response is initially and basically the outcome of a construing act." (1955) Somewhere else, he asserts it more clearly: “Since they construe them differently, they will anticipate them differently and will behave differently as a consequence of their anticipations.” (Kelly, 1963, p. 90) The relationship between constructs and “psychological response” could be considered in terms of either “causation” or “implication." Relevance: This paper deals with the relation between constructs and words in George Kelly’s personal construct psychology.

Purpose: This article investigates the emergence of subsystems in societies as a solution to the double contingency problem. Context: There are two underlying paradigms: one is radical constructivism in the sense that perturbations are at the centre of the self-organising processes; the other is Luhmann’s double contingency problem, where agents learn anticipations from each other. Approach: Central to our investigation is a computer simulation where we place agents into an arena. These agents can learn to (a) collect food and/or (b) steal food from other agents. In order to analyse subsystem formation, we investigate whether agents use both behaviours or just one of these, which is equivalent to determining the number of self-referential loops. This is detected with a novel measure that we call “prediction utilisation.” Results: During the simulation, symmetry breaking is observed. The system of agents divides itself up into two subsystems: one where agents just collect food and another one where agents just steal food from other agents. The ratio between these two populations is determined by the amount of food available.

Key words: Social systems, constructivist paradigm, cybernetics, double contingency, symmetry breaking, emergence

Open peer commentary on the target article “How and Why the Brain Lays the Foundations for a Conscious Self” by Martin V. Butz. Excerpt: There are circumstances when anticipation can be maladaptive. In the following paragraphs, the occurrence of maladaptive anticipation will be illustrated in reference to psychological disorders (depression, generalised anxiety disorder, social phobia). It will be shown that anticipation does not always lead to improved control of oneself and the environment and that anticipation is not always beneficial. Finally, the question is raised of whether it is the strength of the anticipatory drive or the content of the anticipations that is the important factor in the development and construction of the self.

The central question in this paper is: Who (or what) constructs anticipations? I challenge the (tacit) assumption of Rosen’s standard definition of anticipatory systems according to which the cognitive system actively constructs a predictive model based on which it carries out anticipations. My arguments show that so-called implicit anticipatory systems are at the root of any other form of anticipatory systems as the nature of the “decision maker” in the latter cannot be a conscious one.

Key words: anticipation, radical constructivism, superstition, consciousness, readiness potential, Rosen, Libet

It seems characteristic for humans to detect structural patterns in the world to anticipate future states. Therefore, scientific and common sense cognition could be described as information processing which infers rule-like laws from patterns in data-sets. Since information processing is the domain of computers, artificial cognitive systems are generally designed as pattern discoverers. This paper questions the validity of the information processing paradigm as an explanation for human cognition and a design principle for artificial cognitive systems. Firstly, it is known from the literature that people suffer from conditions such as information overload, superstition, and mental disorders. Secondly, cognitive limitations such as a small short-term memory, the set-effect, the illusion of explanatory depth, etc. raise doubts as to whether human information processing is able to cope with the enormous complexity of an infinitely rich (amorphous) world. It is suggested that, under normal conditions, humans construct information rather than process it. The constructed information contains anticipations which need to be met. This can be hardly called information processing, since patterns from the “outside” are not used to produce action but rather to either justify anticipations or restructure the cognitive apparatus. When it fails, cognition switches to pattern processing, which, given the amorphous nature of the experiential world, is a lost cause if these patterns and inferred rules do not lead to a (partial) reorganisation of internal structures such that constructed anticipations can be met again. In this scenario, superstition and mental disorders are the result of a profound and/or random restructuring of already existing cognitive components (e.g., action sequences). This means that whenever a genuinely cognitive system is exposed to pattern processing it may start to behave superstitiously. The closer we get to autonomous self-motivated artificial cognitive systems, the bigger the danger becomes of superstitious information processing machines that “blow up” rather than behave usefully and effectively. Therefore, to avoid superstition in cognitive systems they should be designed as information constructing entities.

Key words: Action-selection, anticipation, constructivism, decision-making, information-processing, pattern search, philosophy of science, schizophrenia, superstition

George Kelly was way ahead of his time when, in 1955, he published his two-volume magnum opus, The Psychology of Personal Constructs. This work was no less than a presentation of a whole new psychology, radically departing from the mechanistic, reductionist, and deterministic assumptions of the dominant approaches of the day. It clearly anticipated the trends that have occurred in psychology over the following half-century or so, as reflected in the debts that proponents of subsequent approaches have acknowledged that they owe to Kelly. However, nowadays it is a rare psychology student who has even heard of personal construct psychology. Why is this so? Has personal construct psychology outlived its usefulness? What does its future hold? These are the questions that will be explored herein. A brief summary of personal construct theory is presented, followed by a review of developments in, and applications of, the theory. The current status of personal construct psychology is then considered, together with its links with other approaches. Finally, anticipations of the future of personal construct psychology are explored.