The constructivist evolutionary epistemology (CEE) has taken up the demand of modern physics that theoretical terms have to be operationalizable (i.e. the description of nature should comprise only quantities, variables or notions which are defined by means of measurement facilities or other physical processes) and extended it by the idea that operationalisation is something general which must be the constituting basis also for observational terms. This is realised by considering the regularities we perceive and which we condense to the laws of nature as the invariants of phylogenetically formed mental cognitive operators. Experimental operators (i.e. measurement facilities) can be seen as extensions of these inborn operators. This will lead to the consolidation of the classical world picture if the mental and the experimental operators involved are commutable. Otherwise there will be invariants which cannot be described in classical terms and, therefore, will require non-classical approaches such as the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics enunciated by Heisenberg. As the development of experimental facilities will never be completed and, therefore, will continue to bring about novel invariants, evolution of science cannot converge towards what many physicists envisage as the “theory of everything” describing definitively the structure of reality (Feynman, 1965; Hawking, 1979). So, both organic and scientific evolution are entirely open and non-deterministic. When seeing also mathematical objects and structures as invariants of mental operators we must expect similar phenomena. Indeed: Just as experimental operators, though constructed entirely according to the rules of classical physics, may lead to results which cannot be described in classical terms, there are also mathematical calculuses which, though based entirely on well tested axioms, can lead to statements which cannot be proven within the context of these axioms as shown by Gödel.

It is shown that the method of operational definition of theoretical terms applied in physics may well support constructivist ideas in cognitive sciences when extended to observational terms. This leads to unexpected results for the notion of reality, induction and for the problem why mathematics is so successful in physics. A theory of cognitive operators is proposed which are implemented somewhere in our brain and which transform certain states of our sensory apparatus into what we call perceptions in the same sense as measurement devices transform the interaction with the object into measurement results. Then, perceived regularities, as well as the laws of nature we would derive from them can be seen as invariants of the cognitive operators concerned and are by this human specific constructs rather than ontologically independent elements. (e.g., the law of energy conservation can be derived from the homogeneity of time and by this depends on our mental time metric generator). So, reality in so far it is represented by the laws of nature has no longer an independent ontological status. This is opposed to Campbell’s ‘natural selection epistemology’. From this it is shown that there holds an incompleteness theorem for physical laws similar to Gödels incompleteness theorem for mathematical axioms, i.e., there is no definitive or object ‘theory of everything’. This constructivist approaches to cognition will allow a coherent and consistent model of both cognitive and organic evolution. Whereas the classical view sees the two evolution rather dichotomously (for ex.: most scientists see cognitive evolution converging towards a definitive world picture, whereas organic evolution obviously has no specific focus (the ‘pride of creation’).

Key words: cognitive operator theory, epistemological autoreproduction, human specific character of natural laws, incompleteness theorem of mathematics (gödel) and physics, realism.

We argue that progress in our scientific understanding of the ‘social mind’ is hampered by a number of unfounded assumptions. We single out the widely shared assumption that social behavior depends solely on the capacities of an individual agent. In contrast, both developmental and phenomenological studies suggest that the personal-level capacity for detached ‘social cognition’ (conceived as a process of theorizing about and/or simulating another mind) is a secondary achievement that is dependent on more immediate processes of embodied social interaction. We draw on the enactive approach to cognitive science to further clarify this strong notion of ‘social interaction’ in theoretical terms. In addition, we indicate how this interaction theory (IT) could eventually be formalized with the help of a dynamical systems perspective on the interaction process, especially by making use of evolutionary robotics modeling. We conclude that bringing together the methods and insights of developmental, phenomenological, enactive and dynamical approaches to social interaction can provide a promising framework for future research.

Key words: theory of mind, cognitive science, phenomenology, embodied cognition, dynamical systems theory, enactive approach, social cognition, interaction theory, evolutionary robotics

Excerpt: The fact that we somehow understand, learn, and use observation terms does not in the least imply that the way in which we understand, learn, and use them is either different from or irrelevant to the way we understand, learn, and use theoretical terms. Let us then subject the observation language to the same scrutiny which the theoreti¬cal language has received. Rather than attacking directly the dual language view and its underly¬ing empiricist assumptions, my strategy will be first to attempt to con¬struct a different account of meaning and confirmation in the observation language. This project is not the ambitious one of a general theory of meaning, nor of the learning of language, but rather the modest one of finding conditions for understanding and use of terms in science – some specification, that is to say, in a limited area of discourse, of the “rules of usage” which distinguish meaningful discourse from mere vocal reflexes. In developing this alternative account I shall rely on ideas which have become familiar particularly in connection with Quine’s discussions of language and meaning and the replies of his critics, whose significances for the logic of science seem not yet to have been exploited nor even fully understood. I shall consider, in particular, the predicate terms of the so-called observation language. But first something must be said to justify consid¬ering the problem as one of “words” and not of “sentences. ” It has often been argued that it is sentences that we learn, produce, understand, and respond to, rather than words, that is, that in theoretical discussion of language, sentences should be taken as units. There are, however, several reasons why this thesis, whether true or false, is irrelevant to the present problem, at least in its preliminary stages. The observation language of science is only a segment of the natural language in which it is ex¬pressed, and we may for the moment assume that rules of sentence formation and grammatical connectives are already given when we come to consider the use of observation predicates. Furthermore, since we are interested in alleged distinctions between the observation and theoretical languages, we are likely to find these distinctions in the characteristics of their respective predicates, not in the connectives which we may assume that they share. Finally, and most importantly, the present enterprise does not have the general positive aim of describing the entire structure of a language. It has rather the negative aim of showing that there are no terms in the observation language which are sufficiently accounted for by “direct observation, ” “experimentally identifiable instances, ” and the like. This can best be done by examining the hardest cases, that is, predicates which do appear to have direct empirical reference. No one would seriously put forward the direct-observation account of grammatical connectives; and if predicates are shown not to satisfy the account, it is likely that the same arguments will suffice to show that sentences do not satisfy it either.

This paper presents a personal history of one strand of W. Ross Ashby’s many ideas: using information theory to analyse complex systems empirically. It starts with where I entered the evolution of the idea as one of his students, points out a problem that emerged as a consequence of generalising information measures from simple to complex systems, i.e. systems with many variables, shows how this problem was eventually solved, and ends with how his idea of decomposing complex systems into smaller interactions reappears in one of the most complex technologies of our time: cyberspace. While nobody could anticipate the complexities that developed since, Ashby’s idea of understanding complex systems in terms of manageable interactions, which I call electronic artefacts, is actually practised today and cyberspace is again worth analysing in information theoretical terms

I propose a systematic survey of the various attitudes proponents of enaction (or enactivism) entertained or are entertaining towards representationalism and towards the use of the concept “mental representation” in cognitive sci-ence. For the sake of clarity, a set of distinctions between different varieties of representationalism and anti-representationalism are presented. I also reca-pitulate and discuss some anti-representationalist trends and strategies one can find the enactive literature, before focusing on some possible limitations of eliminativist versions of enactive anti-representationalism. These limita-tions are here taken as opportunities for reflecting on the fate of enactivism in its relations with representationalism and anti-representationalism.

Key words: natural content, mental representation, representationalism, enactivism, anti-representationalism, theoretical terms, eliminativism