In this paper, a semiotic framework for natural and artificial adaptive percept-action systems is presented. The functional organizations and operational structures of percept-action systems with different degrees of adaptivity and self-construction are considered in terms of syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relations. Operational systems-theoretic criteria for distinguishing semiotic, sign-systems from nonsemiotic physical systems are proposed. A system is semiotic if a set of functional sign-states can be identified, such that the system’s behavior can be effectively described in terms of operations on sign-types. Semiotic relations involved in the operational structure of the observer are outlined and illustrated using the Hertzian commutation diagram. Percept-action systems are observers endowed with effectors that permit them to act on their surrounds. Percept-action systems consist of sensors, effectors, and a coordinative part that determines which actions will be taken. Cybernetic systems adaptively steer behavior by altering percept-action mappings contingent on evaluated performance measures via embedded goals. Self-constructing cybernetic systems use signs to direct the physical construction of all parts of the system to create new syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic relations. When a system gains the ability to construct its material hardware and choose its semiotic relations, it achieves a degree of epistemic autonomy, semantic closure, and pragmatic self-direction.

This paper outlines two ideas. The first proposes a basic high-level neuropsychological and neurophenomenological cybernetic framework for discussing the structure of mind and experience. The second is that much, perhaps even most, informational processes in the brain are inherently temporal in nature, i.e. that they are subserved by temporal neural codes. To paraphrase Mari Reiss Jones, in the study of mind and brain, “time is our lost dimension” (Jones 1976). In this view, there is pervasive, common temporal structure in the internal neural representations that subserve both perception and action. This common temporal structure permits perception to facilitate, inform, and even bootstrap action, and vice versa. Time structure in perception, action (movement, behavior), cognition, affect, motivation (drives, goals), and memory may allow these different mental faculties to mutually influence one another.

This chapter will explore the embodied, enacted and embedded nature of co-speech gestures in the meaning-making process of time conceptualization. We will review three different contextualized communicative exchanges extracted from American Television interviews. First, we will offer a step-by-step form description of the different gesture realizations performed by the speakers as well as a brief description of the gaze fixation patterns. After that, we will offer a functional analysis which will interpret the gesturing patters in terms of their communicative goals on their respective communicative contexts as well as the complex interplay between verbal and non-verbal communication. The resulting interaction between speech, gesture and other bodily movements give rise to a dynamic system that allows for the construction of highly complex meanings: time co-speech gestures play a crucial role in the simulation of virtual anchors for complex mental networks that integrate conceptual and perceptual information.

Some of the problems faced by Cybertherapy along the last two decades are far from being restricted to technical issues. They entail new challenges of medical education, mainly related with the adequate insertion of new technologies in therapeutic processes without distorting the relation between medical professionals and clients. We contend that the acknowledgment of the effects of the systemic effects of therapeutic applications of virtual reality is not fully predictable and can only be achieved attending to the way the patient enacts certain tasks oriented by goals. Enaction means the patient is placed at the centre of the treatment processes, not only as an informed agent, but also as the agent of change through practice. Focusing on the requirements of Cybertherapy applied to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, we propose a theoretic reflection on the conditions of training and treatment in virtual settings. We underline the decisive role of Health Care professionals in applying and improving the potentialities of biometric sensors, graphic and aural engines in virtual (and hybrid) settings. This role can only be adequately understood within a framework of different levels of recursion of the therapeutic system. Two main levels are referred, the first encompassing the patients adaptation and learning to “move within” the interfaces, the second requiring a reflection on the architecture and design of the physical setting and the computerized rendering of sensory data. Further levels concern the larger framework of therapy, relating to its allocation of resources and the social ends that therapeutic technologies, particularly those concerning mental health, must accomplish.

Recent work in "embodied, embedded" cognitive science links mental contents to large-scale distributed effects: dynamic patterns implicating elements of (what are traditionally seen as) sensing, reasoning and acting. Central to this approach is an idea of biological cognition as profoundly "action-oriented" - geared not to the creation of rich, passive inner models of the world, but to the cheap and efficient production of real-world action in real-world context. A case in point is Hurley's (1998) account of the profound role of motor output in fixing the contents of conscious visual awareness – an account that also emphasizes distributed vehicles and long-range dynamical loops. Such stories can seem dramatically opposed to accounts, such as Milner and Goodale (1995), that stress relatively local mechanisms and that posit firm divisions between processes of visual awareness and of visuomotor action. But such accounts, I argue, can be deeply complimentary and together illustrate an important lesson. The lesson is that cognition may be embodied and action-oriented in two distinct – but complimentary – ways. There is a way of being embodied and action-oriented that implies being closely geared to the fine-grained control of low level effectors (hands, arms, legs and so on). And there is a way of being embodied and action-oriented that implies being closely geared to gross motor intentions, current goals, and schematic motor plans. Human cognition, I suggest, is embodied and action- oriented in both these ways. But the neural systems involved, and the size and scope of the key dynamic loops, may be quite different in each case.

Excerpt: there are various common threads between the enactive approach, and current trends and practices in psychopathology. These common threads depend mainly on the fact that both the enactive approach and psychopathology have “phenomenological connections”; as such, they both value lived experience, emphasize the bodily and situated character of the mind, and the fact that what is constructed as salient depends constitutively on the organism’s structure, interests, and goals. To be aware of these commonalities is important to generate further ideas and methods. For example, an enactive neurophenomenological approach could be explicitly adopted to explore whether and how experience and neurophysiological processes correlate in mental disorders; also, emphasizing the complexity of the mutual relations of brain, body, and world, as enactivism does, can provide reasons within psychopathology as to why mental illness should not be reduced to neurochemical impairments, and as to why alternative forms of treatment such as bodily practices should be considered equivalent to drug-based therapy.

Introduction:As the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (IG PME) grew up, so did constructivism. Reflecting over the role of constructivism in the history of mathematics education is a daunting task, but one which provides an opportunity to reflect on what has been accomplished, honor the contributions of scholars around the world, and identify what remains unfinished or unexplained. In undertaking this task, we divide our treatment into five major sections: (1) The historical precedents of constructivism during the first ten years (1976–85); (2) The debates surrounding the ascendancy of constructivism during the next ten years (1986–95); (3) Our own articulation of key principles of constructivism; (4) Thematic developments over the last ten years (1996-present); and (5) An assessment of and projection towards future work. Looking back, we hope we can share the excitement of this epoch period in mathematics education and the contributions to it which came from across the globe. Since its inception at the 1976 International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME) in Karlsruhe, PME has addressed three major goals all addressing the need to integrate mathematics education and psychology. While PME clearly has welcomed and thrived on multiple theories of psychology, beginning with Skemp’s (1978) The Psychology of Learning Mathematics, it has preferred those with a cognitive, and to some extent, an affective orientation. Two major theories of intellectual development have been dominant, namely constructivism and socio-cultural perspectives. In recent years, these two theories have intermingled, but in this volume, they are separated as we trace their paths, overlapping and distinctive. We will not give in to the frequent temptation to cast constructivism and socio-cultural perspectives as a diametrically opposed where one is personal/individual and the other social; but rather track the evolution of the theory via the theorists and the perspectives that they assign to their work.

Progressive embodiment and the subsequent enhancement of presence have been important goals of VR researchers and designers for some time (Biocca, 1997). Consequently, researchers frequently explore the relationship between increasing embodiment and presence yet rarely emphasize the ties between their work and other work on embodiment. More specifically, we argue that experiments manipulating or implementing visual scale, avatar customization, sensory enrichment, and haptic feedback, to name a few examples, all have embodiment as their independent variable. However, very few studies explicitly frame their work as an exploration of embodiment. In this paper we will leverage the field of Embodied Cognition to help clarify the concept of embodiment.

Key words: human-computer interaction, presence, embodied cognition, virtual reality.

A case for a pluralistic approach to cognitive science is sketched. It is argued that cognitive scientists should take seriously the possibility that a single, unified framework for all of cognition is an unrealistic expectation for its diverse interdisciplinary goals and subject matter. A pluralistic approach instead seeks ways of integrating the multiple perspectives that have provided explanatory success in loosely interconnected sub-domains of cognitive phenomena. Research strategies recommended by this approach are discussed, with review of research currently carrying out such strategies and others that may hold promise for the future. The article ends with a discussion of seeking closer integration of the inquirer into consideration of which explanatory framework to choose. A systematic exploration of this transactional approach to cognitive science may grant coherence to pluralism even as it embraces diverse schemes of explanation.

Key words: pluralism, cognitive science, complexity, dynamics, computation, pragmatism

This brief commentary has three goals. The first is to argue that “framework debate” in cognitive science is unresolvable. The idea that one theory or framework can singly account for the vast complexity and variety of cognitive processes seems unlikely if not impossible. The second goal is a consequence of this: We should consider how the various theories on offer work together in diverse contexts of investigation. A final goal is to supply a brief review for readers who are compelled by these points to explore existing literature on the topic. Despite this literature, pluralism has garnered very little attention from broader cognitive science. We end by briefly considering what it might mean for theoretical cognitive science.