Context: For many people, religion and/or spiritual experiences are an important part of their daily lives - shaping their thinking and actions. Studying these experiences relies on qualitative religious studies (RS) research that engages respondents on a deeply personal level. Problem: Researchers are unable to provide an apolitical, value-free approach to research. There lacks a rigorous methodological approach to qualitative RS research that addresses this epistemological obstacle. This is particularly relevant when studying a cohort with radically different beliefs from the researcher. Method: Researcher coupling is presented as a topic that defines the researcher and her participants as a systemic entity. By demonstrating how the researcher’s worldview is tied to her research, an argument for personalised and relational observer-dependent research is presented. Five reflexive questions are proposed as a starting point for personalised research to demonstrate the relational and intersubjective nature of this activity. Results: By linking the researcher to her research and changing the goal of research from independent and objective research to one that is relational and contextual, the scholar can report on her research in an ethical and socially just manner by linking her worldview to her research. Implications: The traditional research activity is redefined as one that should embrace the scholar’s worldview instead of attempting to hide it. The scientific ideals of independence and objectivity are replaced by interdependence and hence a proposal is made for personalised research that embraces the intersubjective nature of this activity. This proposal is meant to alleviate some of the epistemological weaknesses in RS. This paradigm shift promotes rigour as a qualifier for methodology including changes to how research is categorised. Constructivist content: Margaret Mead’s ideas of observer dependence in anthropological research and how the observer constructs her research findings are discussed. The circularity that exists in this relational context is analysed according to Bradford Keeney’s ideas on recursion and resultant future behavioural correction. Ranulph Glanville’s ideas of intersubjectivity and his concept of “in the between” are used as a foundation for the researcher-participant relationship. Ross Ashby’s notion of experimenter coupling is used as a basis for researcher coupling.

Key words: Epistemology, ethics, personalised and relational research, religious studies, rigour, research methodology, worldview.

Excerpt: Currently, many educators suggest that learning can be enhanced if the learning environment includes moreinteractive, student-centered, and engaging activities where learners construct their understanding rather than moretraditional methods of teacher-centered, direct instruction. Inherent is a paradigm shift from more historicalteaching methods to an environment where teachers relinquish control and learners accept responsibility forlearning. Many agree that this promotes more ownership and stimulates more meaningful learning. However,engaging in such a learning environment presents challenges for both the teacher, who designs, develops, andfacilitates this complex environment, and learners who must interact and take responsibility for constructing theirunderstanding. This paper describes a study conducted by Northern Arizona University’s Educational Technology facultyregarding training teachers for the integration of technology and the promotion of learner-centered instruction. Participants included traditional pre-service students enrolled in a required “Technology in the Classroom” courseand veteran teachers engaged in professional development designed to provide instruction into the integration oftechnology into the classroom. Instruction modeled the integration of technology from a constructionist perspective,and provided participants the opportunity to engage in activities that utilized the integration of technology. Thelearning environment was designed to provide introduction to skills and practice exercises utilizing computerapplications that could be later used within their teaching practice.

According to the American Society for Cybernetics (2012), there is no unified comprehensive account of a far-reaching narrative that takes into account all of the Macy Conferences and what was discussed and accomplished at these meetings. This chapter will thus propose how group dialogues on concepts such as information and feedback allowed the Macy Conferences to act as a catalyst for second-order systems theory, when fi rstorder, steady-state models of homeostasis became supplanted by those of self-reference in observing systems. I will trace how such a development transpired through a conferences-wide interdisciplinary mindset that promoted the idea of refl exivity. According to N. Katherine Hayles, the conferences’ singular achievement was to create a “new paradigm” for “looking at human beings … as information-processing entities who are essentially similar to intelligent machines,” by routing Claude Shannon’s information theory through Warren McCulloch’s “model of neural functioning” and John von Neumann’s work in “biological systems” and then capitalizing on Norbert Wiener’s “visionary” talent for disseminating the “larger implications” of such a paradigm shift. From this perspective, the most crucial work would achieve its fruition after the end of the Macy conferences. Yet the foundations for such work were, perforce, cast during the discussions at the conferences that epitomize science in the making and, as such, warrant our careful attention.

Excerpt: Constructivism is a concept that in recent years has garnered considerable attention among science education researchers. Essentially, constructivism is a model of how learning takes place. Yager (1991, p. 53) called it a “most promising model” of learning. Yeany (1991, p. 1) alluded to a Kuhnian paradigm shift and suggested that constructivism may lead “to a gelling of existing thought as well as the stimulation of new ideas.” We do not believe this is hyperbole. In fact, we would add that the potential extends far beyond the bounds of science education (see e.g., Aderman & Russell, 1990). It seems to us that constructivist thought is applicable in any learning situation, including educational and psychological consultation. In this column, we first briefly describe constructivist thought as it has developed in the field of science education. Second, we suggest that constructivism can provide a promising conceptual framework for organizing research and practice in the various fields in which consultation is practiced.

Inspired by the work of Humberto Maturana, this book points to a new way forward that is not only possible, but is essential to our survival. Cull maintains that the human race is at the threshold of the next phase in its evolution. This will mean a paradigm shift from the current individualistic view that underpins a superficial and materialistic way of living, to a perception of life that is, in its essence, interconnected and circular.

In recent decades, the scientific study of complex systems (Bar-Yam 1997; Mitchell 2009) has demanded a paradigm shift in our worldviews (Gershenson et al. 2007; Heylighen et al. 2007). Traditionally, science has been reductionistic. Still, complexity occurs when components are difficult to separate, due to relevant interactions. These interactions are relevant because they generate novel informationwhich determines the future of systems. This fact has several implications (Gershenson 2013).

In the 20th century we thought the brain extracted knowledge from sensations. The 21st century witnessed a ‘strange inversion’, in which the brain became an organ of inference, actively constructing explanations for what’s going on ‘out there’, beyond its sensory epithelia. One paper played a key role in this paradigm shift.

This paper supports the view that the ongoing shift from orthodox to embodied-embedded cognitive science has been significantly influenced by the experimental results generated by AI research. Recently, there has also been a noticeable shift toward enactivism, a paradigm which radicalizes the embodiedembedded approach by placing autonomous agency and lived subjectivity at the heart of cognitive science. Some first steps toward a clarification of the relationship of AI to this further shift are outlined. It is concluded that the success of enactivism in establishing itself as a mainstream cognitive science research program will depend less on progress made in AI research and more on the development of a phenomenological pragmatics.

Key words: AI, cognitive science, paradigm shift, enactivism, phenomenology.

In this chapter, I want to address two issues. The first one is a local issue within current debates about social cognition pertaining to differences between simulation theory (ST) and interaction theory (IT) in the understanding of intercorporeity. I then want to use this issue to address a larger, less local one concerning science. More specifically, depending on what one concludes about the debate between ST and IT, the implication is that either one can continue to do science as we have been doing it, or one has to do it differently. This distinction between ways of doing science is not the same as the distinction between normal and revolutionary science described by Thomas Kuhn (1962). Something different is at stake. It’s not simply a paradigm shift that would change our conception of nature (or in this case, the nature of human behavior) in a way that would allow us to do science as usual, but rather a change in our conception of nature that would suggest a different way of doing science. This change, I’ll argue, is prefigured in the thinking of Merleau-Ponty (1967, 2012) concerning the notion of form or structure in his early works.

Key words: social cognition, interaction theory, body schema, simulation theory, social cognitive function

In recent years, there has been rapidly growing interest in embodied cognition, a multifaceted theoretical proposition that (1) cognitive processes are influenced by the body, (2) cognition exists in the service of action, (3) cognition is situated in the environment, and (4) cognition may occur without internal representations. Many proponents view embodied cognition as the next great paradigm shift for cognitive science. In this article, we critically examine the core ideas from embodied cognition, taking a “thought exercise” approach. We first note that the basic principles from embodiment theory are either unacceptably vague (e.g., the premise that perception is influenced by the body) or they offer nothing new (e.g., cognition evolved to optimize survival, emotions affect cognition, perception–action couplings are important). We next suggest that, for the vast majority of classic findings in cognitive science, embodied cognition offers no scientifically valuable insight. In most cases, the theory has no logical connections to the phenomena, other than some trivially true ideas. Beyond classic laboratory findings, embodiment theory is also unable to adequately address the basic experiences of cognitive life.

Key words: embodied cognition, higher-order cognition