There are some signs that a resurgence of interest in modeling constitutive autonomy is underway. This paper contributes to this recent development by exploring the possibility of using evolutionary robotics, traditionally only used as a generative mechanism for the study of embodied-embedded cognitive systems, to generate simulation models of constitutively autonomous systems. Such systems, which are autonomous in the sense that they self-constitute an identity under precarious conditions, have so far been elusive. The challenges and opportunities involved in such an endeavor are explicated in terms of a concrete model. While we conclude that this model fails to fully satisfy all the organizational criteria that are required for constitutive autonomy, it nevertheless serves to illustrate that evolutionary robotics at least has the potential to become a valuable tool for generating such models.

Key words: artificial life, autopoiesis, evolutionary robotics, autonomy.

Excerpt: Yerkish is an artificial language that was designed for the specific purpose of exploring the linguistic potential of nonhuman primates. It was designed under a number of constraints, both theoretical and practical. In what follows I shall try to show which aspects of the language were determined by these initial practical constraints and which by the theory underlying its design. Since the language was created at the same time as the computer system that monitors all the communication events for which it is used, there will inevitably be some overlap in the description of the language and that of the automatic sentence analyzer, or parser. Also, since the grammar we are using is a correlational grammar, i.e., one that takes into account the semantic aspects of combinatorial patterns (unlike traditional systems of grammar, which tend to consider syntactic structures quite apart from semantics), the description of the lexicon and that of the grammar will have to merge at several points. Nevertheless, this chapter will be articulated into relatively independent sections dealing with the word signs (lexigrams), the meaning and grammatical classification of word signs, combinatorial patterns, the parsing system, and, finally, a brief application of the concept of grammatical ity to a sample of Lana’s output.

Key words: language, chimpanse

Traditionally, there has been a certain amount of detachment between teachers of mathematics and cognitively oriented educational scientists who endeavored to develop theories about the learning of mathematics. At present, however, there are signs of a rapprochement, at least on the part of some of the scientists, who have come to realize that their theories must ultimately be evaluated according to how much they can contribute to the improvement of educational practice. Healthy though this realization is, it at once raises problems of its own. At the outset there is the research scientists” inherent fear of getting bogged down in so many practical considerations that it will no longer be possible to come up with a theory that may satisfy their minimum requirements of generality and elegance. Then, when scientists do come up with a tentative theory, there is the difficulty of applying it in such a way that its practical usefulness is demonstrated. This would require either scientists” direct involvement in teaching or the professional teachers” willingness and freedom to become familiar with the theory and to incorporate it into actual teaching practice for a certain length of time. In both cases, it will help if scientists and teachers can establish a consensual domain. In other words, they must come to share some basic ideas on the process of education and the teaching of mathematics in particular.

Key words: education, cognition, development

This article proposes a possible synthesis between the concept of structural coupling with the milieu, derived from the thought of Maturana and Varela, and the concept of semeiosis derived from Peirce. The purpose is to develop a vocabulary and conceptual framework in which to envisage the relationships among autopoietic systems i.e. organisms, against which communication can take place. By showing how the sign emerges from structural coupling, this article hopes to encourage (or reinforce) a gestalt shift in scholars of communication, away from a conduit metaphor of sending and receiving communications, and towards a grounding of communication in the relationships among organisms and their environment(s), which include other organisms. When these organisms engage habitually in what Maturana calls the “coor-dination of coordination of behavior,” and especially when this involves languaging of the human type, then the environment to which they are coupled also involves a system of signs, which, as Peirce demonstrates, is continually changed by the very interpretive actions which constitute it. Human languaging is “the play of signs” because play is a process of “co-imagining” in which organisms generate a repertoire of potential behaviors by placing themselves outside the immediate (‘serious’) context of adaptation/ structural coupling. But within the cooperative domain of human work i.e. the human collaborative structural coupling with its shared environ-ment or milieu, this “play of signs” can pass or fail the test of effectiveness. Humans engaged in cooperative work co-coordinate their structural couplings by way of conversationing, a co-coordination which depends upon their shared encounter with a Secondness or “otherness” with which they grapple together – an “otherness” which can never be known directly, but only approached by the work of fallibilist human cooperation.

Open peer commentary on the article “Semiosis as Eigenform and Observation as Recursive Interpretation” by Diana Gasparyan. Abstract: I discuss what it means to comprehend in Gasparyan’s theory that defines language as an eigenform. For that, I raise questions concerning the conditions of mutual understanding of signs, Gasparyan’s pragmatic approach, and her reference to society as a limit of interpretation.

The topic suggested by this chapter’s title might seem an unlikely one. On the one hand, phenomenology of language is something of a neglected field. This is perhaps partly because historically phenomenologists have been reluctant to venture into the supposed linguistic territory of analytic philosophy, tending instead to focus either more broadly on consciousness, disclosure, or signs, or on the views of language in individual authors. On the other hand, cognitive science in the ‘4e’ tradition – that highlighting the embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended nature of cognition – is generally understood to be defined by a turn away from language. More specifically, it distances itself from the earlier ‘representationalist’ approach in cognitive science, which took all human cognition to be essentially linguistic in form and in principle capable of being modelled algorithmically as a system of language-like ‘rules and representations’. 1 Consequently, despite recognizing that the role of language ultimately needs to be understood, most work in the 4e tradition focuses on nonlinguistic phenomena to correct the earlier overemphasis on language. Thus, it might seem that the title of this chapter gestures into a void.

Key words: cognitive feat, phenomenological description, cognitive tool, natural entity, cognitive artefact

Open peer commentary on the target article “Who Conceives of Society?” by Ernst von Glasersfeld. First paragraph: Ernst von Glasersfeld sets out to explain how familiar patterns (signs) arise in private experience – and how they are extracted or “recognized” as such. These patterns are recursive, which imposes significance (familiarity) on them, and are, in the course of time, collected into a “bulk of experience.” I think a convinced constructivist can – if hesitantly – accept his rendering, even though it is one that lacks the stringency one expects from a supposedly natural scientist (§46). However, the crucial point is that this paper does not address the convinced constructivist but rather the opposite camps, and I doubt he succeeds in convincing them.

Open peer commentary on the article “Semiosis as Eigenform and Observation as Recursive Interpretation” by Diana Gasparyan. Abstract: In this commentary, I would like to make two points. The first point is concerned with the typology of the concept(s) of “sign.” All of Gasparyan’s examples of signs are conventional signs, in the formation of which humans, by definition, play an important role- but do her arguments apply to all kinds of signs, as she claims? The second point is about the possibility of a metaposition to semiotics. Gasparyan argues that such a metaposition is impossible and I would like to shed more light on the scope of this claim.

It is argued that the traditional philosophical/linguistic analysis of semiotic phenomena is based on the false epistemological assumption that linguistic and non- linguistic entities possess different ontologies. An attempt is made to show where linguistics as the study of signs went wrong, and an unorthodox account of the na- ture of semiosis is proposed in the framework of autopoiesis as a new epistemology of the living.

Key words: sign, semiosis, ontology, epistemology

Against the background of the emerging holistic view of language based on physicalism (the embodiment of mind) and an understanding that language is a biological phenomenon rooted in semiosis as the experience of life, it is argued that a new philosophical framework for cognition and language is currently taking shape. This philosophy is best characterized as a synthesis of ideas developed in cognitive linguistics, semiotics and biology. These ideas bear directly on autopoiesis as the theory of the living which possesses a greater explanatory power as it assumes the experiential nature of language. Autopoiesis allows for deeper insights into the essence of language which is viewed as a kind of adaptive behavior of an organism involving a meaning system constituted by signs of signs, thus making unification of (humanistic) science an attainable goal.

Key words: cognition, semiotics, biology, experience, meaning, life.