In this paper, we propose a mathematical expression of closure to efficient causation in terms of λ-calculus; we argue that this opens up the perspective of developing principled computer simulations of systems closed to efficient causation in an appropriate programming language. We conclude with a brief discussion of the question of whether closure to efficient causation captures all relevant properties of living systems. We suggest that it might not be the case, and that more complex definitions could indeed create some obstacles to computability.

In this paper, we propose a mathematical expression of closure to efficient causation in terms of λ-calculus, we argue that this opens up the perspective of developing principled computer simulations of systems closed to efficient causation in an appropriate programming language. An important implication of our formulation is that, by exhibiting an expression in λ-calculus, which is a paradigmatic formalism for computability and programming, we show that there are no conceptual or principled problems in realizing a computer simulation or model of closure to efficient causation. We conclude with a brief discussion of the question whether closure to efficient causation captures all relevant properties of living systems. We suggest that it might not be the case, and that more complex definitions could indeed create crucial some obstacles to computability.

Key words: Closure to efficient causation, λ-calculus, Computability, Impredicativity, (M, R) systems, Robert Rosen

The lived experience associated with the emergence of a new idea has been little studied. An empirical approach consisting in gathering precise descriptions of the ideation process of scientists, as well as their process of expression, led us to explore a deeply pre-reflected, gestural and transmodal dimension of experience that seems to be the very source of meaning. After describing our research method, we present the results of our survey, and then describe the structural characteristics of this dimension. We conclude with a number of lines of thought on the pedagogical and epistemological consequences of the recognition of the gestural character of meaning.

Context: The pandemic we are going through is an unprecedented situation from which tragic consequences loom. Disturbing and painful though it is, we should, however, remember that it is but a symptom of a profound ecological crisis that is already generating tremendous suffering, and threatens with extinction most living species and perhaps all humankind. This ecological crisis is due to our way of life based on frantic consumption, which exhausts the earth’s resources. Problem: Where does this insatiable desire for consumption come from? This article explores the hypothesis that our way of life and the ecological disaster it is bringing about originates in our blindness to what is nevertheless closest to us: our own lived experience. Our awareness of it is not only partial, but mistaken, which leads to dramatic consequences. Method: To check the accuracy of this hypothesis, I collected fine-grained “micro-phenomenological” descriptions of experiences essential to our human lives, such as the emergence of ideas, of perceptions, the process of verbal expression and the experience of intersubjective encounters. I also relied upon the work of researchers who explored them. Results: These investigations highlight, at the heart of these processes, a dimension of experience that we usually do not recognize: the “felt” dimension of experience, where the separation that we usually think we perceive between “inner” and “outer” space becomes permeable and even vanishes. At the cost of considerable tension and without our knowledge, we try to maintain the separation between these two spaces, which has the effect of depriving them both of life, of dis-animating them. Outside space, the non-human “environment” is perceived as an indifferent and inert space, filled with objects intended to be possessed and exploited. We ourselves lose contact with the felt dimension that is the very stuff of experience and the source of meaning. Implications: Most of our activities - education, medicine, architecture, agriculture - are based on this rigid separation and on the concealment and stifling of the felt dimension, which has the effect of exhausting us. The weaker we become, the more we try to satisfy ourselves with frantic consumption, and the more we exhaust the earth. This rupture with the living heart of our experience is therefore an essential condition for the survival of our current economic system, which strives to maintain it. Liberation from this enslavement requires recognizing and loosening the tensions that cut us off from this source. Retrieving contact with our experience is thus an essential condition for us to find the strength to stop transforming any aspect of our life into an object of consumption, and to regain enough lucidity, dignity, and courage to change our model of society. Keywords: Ecology, ecopsychology, felt meaning, lived experience, micro-phenomenology, political ecology.

Habits are the topic of a venerable history of research that extends back to antiquity, yet they were originally disregarded by the cognitive sciences. They started to become the focus of interdisciplinary research in the 1990s, but since then there has been a stalemate between those who approach habits as a kind of bodily automatism or as a kind of mindful action. This implicit mind-body dualism is ready to be overcome with the rise of interest in embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (4E) cognition. We review the enactive approach and highlight how it moves beyond the traditional stalemate by integrating both autonomy and sense-making into its theory of agency. It defines a habit as an adaptive, precarious, and self-sustaining network of neural, bodily, and interactive processes that generate dynamical sensorimotor patterns. Habits constitute a central source of normativity for the agent. We identify a potential shortcoming of this enactive account with respect to bad habits, since self-maintenance of a habit would always be intrinsically good. Nevertheless, this is only a problem if, following the mainstream perspective on habits, we treat habits as isolated modules. The enactive approach replaces this atomism with a view of habits as constituting an interdependent whole on whose overall viability the individual habits depend. Accordingly, we propose to define a bad habit as one whose expression, while positive for itself, significantly impairs a person’s well-being by overruling the expression of other situationally relevant habits. We conclude by considering implications of this concept of bad habit for psychological and psychiatric research, particularly with respect to addiction research.

Key words: 4e cognition, dynamical approach, agency, sense-making, regional identities, self, mind-body dualism

Open peer commentary on the article “A Proposal for Personalised and Relational Qualitative Religious Studies Methodology” by Philip Baron. Abstract: If I accept that (second-order) cybernetics provides a way of thinking about studies of religion and religious behavior, with religious studies researcher-scholars accounting for their own world views and biases, then expressing explicitly what I, as a consumer of the results, would like to get from those studies (reflecting my world view) must be taken as desirable. After I offer such an expression, I generate three questions on the relevance of cybernetics to the conduct of these studies. The pursuit of these questions could then contribute to the insights on society and social transformation that I want from religious studies.

This chapter explores the theoretical intersection between Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy as an avenue for post-structuralist political thought. Against the predominant reception of Luhmann’s thought as analytically positivist and politically conservative, it highlights the potential of Luhmann’s work as a critical theory. Linking Deleuze’s and Luhmann’s theories of sense, the chapter first develops an immanent perspective on onto-genetic creativity. For both theorists, sense-expression is ungrounded but self-grounding. In sense, material and epistemic singularities are always already interlinked so that neither can be assumed to hold constitutive primacy. Second, the chapter uses Luhmann’s political sociology in conjunction with Deleuze and Guattari’s work to sketch out a post-structuralist theory of how democratic politics functions in contemporary capitalist societies. Luhmann shows how, under the conditions of general functional differentiation, which mirror Deleuze and Guattari’s account of capitalism, politics functions autopoietically and reproduces itself through providing orientation in sense.

Purpose of this paper – From the radical constructivist point of view the mainstream conception of memory as an encoding-storage-retrieval device is considered questionable. The paper aims at an alternative perspective on memory and its interaction with cognition. Design/methodology/approach – The argumentation is based on various experimental data such as cognitive problem-solving, change blindness, and childhood amnesia. Theoretical insights of the radical constructivist epistemology developed by Heinz von Foerster and others contribute as well. Findings: Describing memory as storage-retrieval device separated from cognition is rejected. Rather, memory is the expression of a static snapshot of otherwise dynamical cognitive processes. As an embodied network of constructive components, the evolutionary evolved cognition-memory compound is not geared toward reproducing “true” facts. Rather, its goal is to produce structure that maintains coherence with the rest of the network. Research limitations/implications – Memory research should not judge recognition in terms of “correct” or “false” but rather reassess its performance in terms of the super-ordinate cognitive faculty. Practical implications: The results imply that the role of memory should be reconsidered both in memory research as well as in practical areas such as psychotherapy and law. Originality/value – The new characterization of memory rejects the narrow computational theory of mind. It provides a better account for memory distortion phenomena such as false recognition, intrusion, and confabulation.

Key words: Memory, Language, Child psychology, Cognition

In everyday life we often act adequately, yet without deliberation. For instance, we immediately obtain and maintain an appropriate distance from others in an elevator. The notion of normativity implied here is a very basic one, namely distinguishing adequate from inadequate, correct from incorrect, or better from worse in the context of a particular situation. In the first part of this paper I investigate such ‘situated normativity’ by focusing on unreflective expert action. More particularly, I use Wittgenstein’s examples of craftsmen (tailors and architects) absorbed in action to introduce situated normativity. Situated normativity can be understood as the normative aspect of embodied cognition in unreflective skillful action. I develop Wittgenstein’s insight that a peculiar type of affective behaviour, ‘directed discontent’, is essential for getting things right without reflection. Directed discontent is a reaction of appreciation in action and is introduced as a paradigmatic expression of situated normativity. In the second part I discuss Wittgenstein’s ideas on the normativity of what he calls ‘blind’ rule-following and the ‘bedrock’ of immediate action. What matters for understanding the normativity of (even ‘blind’) rule-following, is not that one has the capacity for linguistic articulation or reflection but that one is reliably participating in a communal custom. In the third part I further investigate the complex relationships between unreflective skillful action, perception, emotion, and normativity. Part of this entails an account of the link between normativity at the level of the expert’s socio-cultural practice and the individual’s situated and lived normativity.

Abstract: The article examines the reception of (radical) constructivist thought in Practical Theology, by example of religious pedagogy and pastoral care. It demonstrates that to a great extent constructivist thinking has been received by the diverse fi elds of Practical Theology independently from each other. A specifi c model of Practical Theology built on a constructivist foundation does not yet exist. A constructivist religious pedagogy problematizes confessional religious teaching, and may serve to support ideas of a general, supra-confessional religious teaching, even though distinguishing it from the teaching of ethics is problematic. In religious pedagogy, constructivism leads to an abandonment of a curricular theory strictly oriented to learning objectives. Rather, emphasis in the understanding of learning is given to the individual activity (Selbsttätigkeit) of the subject. This in turn leads to new didactic propositions, but does not mean renouncing didactics as the ideal of fully self-directed learning. The introduction of educational standards (Bildungsstandards), as well as the competency-driven orientation both in learning and in teacher education, can be understood as an expression and didactic adaptation of a constructivist religious pedagogy. The development of child theology and of “theologizing” with children can be seen as a consequence of constructivist thinking. In the psychologically-oriented pastoral care, the reception of constructivist thought has taken place through systemic family therapy and Luhmann’s systems theory. Based on Christoph Morgenthaler’s systemic pastoral care we demonstrate how theological refl ection presents the reference to God as a dynamic reality in the sense of a critical correction of God constructs, thus contributing to make the religious development in relational systems more dynamic. Finally, taking the point of view that Practical Theology is a second order observation system, we problematize the universal scope of the religion of the subject, or religion in society/the public realm and we ask to what extent the churches are receptive for a constructivist Practical Theology oriented toward a plural praxis, and which political interests are served by the thematization of a non-confessional religion in society.

Key words: radical constructivism, practical theology, religious education, pastoral care.