This article deals with the links between the enaction paradigm and artificial intelligence. Enaction is considered a metaphor for artificial intelligence, as a number of the notions which it deals with are deemed incompatible with the phenomenal field of the virtual. After explaining this stance, we shall review previous works regarding this issue in terms of artificial life and robotics. We shall focus on the lack of recognition of co-evolution at the heart of these approaches. We propose to explicitly integrate the evolution of the environment into our approach in order to refine the ontogenesis of the artificial system, and to compare it with the enaction paradigm. The growing complexity of the ontogenetic mechanisms to be activated can therefore be compensated by an interactive guidance system emanating from the environment. This proposition does not however, resolve that of the relevance of the meaning created by the machine (sense-making) Such reflections lead us to integrate human interaction into this environment in order to construct relevant meaning in terms of participative artificial intelligence. This raises a number of questions with regards to setting up an enactive interaction. The article concludes by exploring a number of issues, thereby enabling us to associate current approaches with the principles of morphogenesis, guidance, the phenomenology of interactions and the use of minimal enactive interfaces in setting up experiments which will deal with the problem of artificial intelligence in a variety of enaction-based ways.

Key words: enaction, embodied-embedded ai, sense-making, co-evolution, guidance, phylogenesis/ontogenesis ratio, human in the loop, virtual reality

Upshot: The main topic of Dennett’s book is intelligent design and the design of intelligence, trying to make intuitive the processes of both, be it the top-down process of comprehension that designs with foresight and reasons or the bottom-up process of evolution that has, through blind trial and error, captured free-floating rationales and ultimately, through co-evolution (between memes and genes), achieved top-down intelligence, flipping its original design process upside down.

Open peer commentary on the article “Constructivism, Fast Thinking, Heuristics and Sustainable Development” by Hugh Gash. Abstract: Can radical constructivism, with its agnostic stance towards any form of mind-independent reality, offer a way forward for sustainable development? Do fast thinking and heuristics facilitate or inhibit such development? These questions are discussed in the context of constructivist psychotherapy and of human co-evolution.

What is being discribed as differences between organic and cultural evolution (for example that one is Darwinian, the other, Lamarckian in character) depends on the implicit agreements made on what are analogue issues in culture and life. A special consequence of the definitions used is that opposite causal mechanisms are attributed. The development of empirical scientific theories is seen as an internal adaptation to external data. Organic evolution, however, is seen as an external selection of internal modifications. Seeing science as a special cognitive tool in the sense of evolutionary epistemology (EE) which then has to evolve according to the same principles as evolution of organic tools does, would require some notional realignments in order to level the established organismic/cultural dichotomy. Central to the approach used here is the notion of reality and adaptation. The EE declares that human categories of perception and thinking (space, time, object, causality etc.) result from evolutionary adaptation to the independent structures of an ontological reality (Campbell: “natural-selection-epistemology”). Here a “Constructivist evolutionary epistemology” (CEE) is proposed which goes one step further and considers also the category of reality itself to be a special mental concept acquired phylogenetically to immunize proven ideas under the label of “reality.” According to the CEE, the evaluation criteria for strategies and theories are the consistency with the previously and phylogenetically acquired organic and mental structures, rather than the adaptation to external data. A similar view can also be held in organic evolution where the various metabolic processes and higher strategies modify the external data according to their previously established own requirements rather than changing those requirements in adaptation to external data. Thus cognitive and scientific as well as organic evolution is an enterprise of conquest rather than of discovery and reality will lose its role as a universal legislator and evaluator. The CEE implements this thought, by considering all regularities perceived and the laws of nature derived from them as invariants of mental or sensory operators. The extension of human sense organs by means of physical measurement operators leads to the completion of classical physics if the experimental and the inborn cognitive operators commute. Otherwise non-classical (i.e. “non-human”) approaches are required such as quantum mechanics, which are based on the invariants brought about experimentally. As the set of possible experimental facilities (and therefore of new invariants) is not closed it follows that evolution of science will not end in a definitive “theory of everything” but in basically endless co-evolution between experiments and their theoretical interpretations. The same applies to organic evolution which can be considered as coevolution between genomic structures and their interpretation by the epigenetic system which itself is subject to genomic modifications. This may lead to non-stable recursive processes described here as nonlinear genetics. Some general evolutionary strategies and principles are discussed with a view to being applicable in organic evolution as well as in cultural and social evolution. Special consideration is given to the view that the need to master the physical world (mainly being done by scientific efforts) may be superseded in the long run by the need to master our social environment.

Excerpt: Concluding that cognitive structures and instruments are unconditional or arbitrary because they are not, and cannot be derived from external boundary conditions, is mistaken, since internal boundary conditions must also be taken into account. Firstly, there are the developmental constraints of cognitive evolution itself; cognitive as well as organic evolution is subject to what has been evolved before. Cognitive evolution in our time, therefore, would find rather limited degrees of freedom. Further, cognitive instruments exert themselves in continuous co-evolution with organic instruments for meeting organically defined needs and requirements. This means that cognitive systems cannot be explained by reference to what is called their object, but only through their organic genesis. This justifies efforts made to look for a closer relationship between cognitive and organic evolution.

Von Bertalanffy stated that, at a certain threshold of complexity – namely when numerous forces are simultaneously interacting – systems” dynamics belong to a class other than causal mechanism, whether linear or circular. My objective here is to develop Von Bertalanffy’s point and to sort out a class of systems, the multilevel web, in which various forces or subsystems interact simultaneously within and across levels. Webs thus exhibit dynamical evolution through the cooperation and co-evolution of processes. I focus on two instances of multilevel web – the human mind, and small groups of people and show that cognitive webs demonstrate creative self-organization, as well as plural self-reference and free-will. I argue that, in multilevel webs, the variety and the complexity of forces interacting simultaneously instantiate inter-influences between connected elements/processes, so complex that they render causality irrelevant as a formalism. Webs’ inter-influences are fundamentally non deterministic, and they reach beyond causal mechanisms. However, simpler mechanisms such as linear cause-effects and circular causality may exist as component processes, enmeshed in the ensemble of interactions of the more complex system. In the first and second sections I present cognitive and social webs and sort out their properties.

Key words: Self-organization, self-reference, autopoiesis, multilevel webs, inter-influences

Firms can be regarded as autopoietic systems that continuously reproduce themselves. This paper regards the firm itself as an autopoietic entity. This approach helps identify: the “sensory function” (“interactive openness”) that enables the continual co‐evolution with the environment; and “memory function” (“self‐referentiality,” “organisational closure”) that enables the firm’s effective functioning. The integration of these two functions helps utilise the major knowledge flows and facilitates the firm’s continual learning and renewal in its changing business environment. The analysis of case companies that represent the management consulting industry indicates that very different firms can be described as autopoietic, self‐producing systems. The case firms have built sophisticated, interconnected organisational solutions and information and communication systems to support interactive openness and self‐referentiality. Aligning the two major knowledge functions and flows with other organisational solutions helps build successful and sustainable knowledge management solutions that support the firm’s continuous renewal.

In this paper, we explore the implications of adopting (and developing the capacities necessary to adopt) an empathic second-person research perspective. Such a perspective aims to mediate participants’ access to their own experience, thereby providing a rich source of first-person data as well as a powerful pedagogical tool. Working within the enactivist tradition (Maturana and Varela 1987; Varela et al. 1991), we acknowledge and welcome the co-evolution and intertwining of awareness, description, and experience that such an approach necessarily entails, and we further note a blurring of the distinction between teacher and researcher that occurs as the research method prompts changes in the very aspects of experience we are observing. We begin by weaving together insights based on Varela’s “empathic coach” (Varela and Shear 1999) and Gendlin’s (1962, 1978, 1991) Philosophy of the Implicit and practice of Focusing. We describe how we developed and refined our own use of these methods to prompt and describe learners’ evolving experiences of mathematical doubt and certainty. We then further elaborate the nature of the empathic coach and close with a discussion of implications for teaching mathematics.

Key words: enactivism, complexity, second-person observer, pre-reflective awareness, mathematical experience of doubt and certainty

This paper explores the learning of both individuals and organizations within the context of a 3-year professional development program for mathematics and science teachers in a middle school. We propose to extend the notion of awareness from individuals to autonomous systems as a means to study the learning of teachers, mentors, the school, and the organization that provided the program. We describe how the notions of structural determinism and co-evolution through structural coupling informed the enactment of the program, as well as how this perspective informed the design of research on teachers’ experiences of their deepening understanding of mathematics for teaching during this time. Then we elaborate on the levels of awareness developed by teachers, mentors, the school, and the organization as a result of the constant interactions and mutual influence along and beyond the program. Data consisted of post-interviews with eleven mathematics teachers, our own reflections, and the documents generated during the program.

Key words: structural determinism, co-evolution, noticing, teacher educators, autonomous systems

Existing educational practices focus on subject matter knowledge that is, through the act of teaching, brought into the heads of students. Materials, texts, or images qua aspects of the learning environment are treated as given in terms of fixed and unambiguous structures (ontologies). Drawing on examples from a large data base on learning physics through laboratory activities, I show that (a) students do not perceive and act in worlds shared with physicists and physics teachers and (b) during collective activities, students evolve new domain ontologies and language games by interacting with each other. Because of structural constraints in the environment (teacher, textbook, equipment), initially quite different ontologies and language games converge, the shared language games often become more commensurable with (existing) scientific ontologies and language games. In this co-evolution of ontology and language game, gestures provide an important bridge between laboratory experiences in science and scientific discourse about abstract entities.