Psychophysical studies of change blindness indicate that, at any instant, human observers are aware of detail in few parts of the visual field. Such results suggest, to some theorists, that human vision reconstructs only a few portions of the visual scene and that, to bridge the resulting representational gaps, it often lets physical objects serve as their own short-term memory. We propose that human vision reconstructs no portion of the visual scene, and that it never lets physical objects serve as their own short-term memory.

Most of Shaun Gallagher’s Enactivist Interventions into philosophical issues about the mind are quite effective, but there are a few that could be improved. In what follows, we attempt to make two of Gallagher’s arguments more convincing. Our focus will be on Gallagher’s use of Francisco Varela’s “threefold distinction in temporal and dynamical registers” (Gallagher 2017, 8; Varela 1999). Gallagher uses this threefold distinction to address issues concerning what he calls the “causal-constitution fallacy” and issues concerning neuroscientific findings and free will. Gallagher is less convincing than he could be when he addresses these issues, because although he invokes Varela’s threefold distinction, he does not also provide a detailed story about how these “temporal and dynamical registers” relate to one another. We will provide a counter-intuitive, but empirically well-supported story about how the registers relate to one another, and, in so doing, improve upon Gallagher’s.…

The introduction raises basic issues about the many contradictory shapes of constructivism and the possible existence of a central substance or philosophical core that can be called constructivism. The ontological and epistemological dimensions of constructivism that help mold the different shapes are highlighted in the introduction. Next comes an analysis of constructivist shape-shifting from Piaget to the social constructivists, followed by a synthesis of any substantial tenets that might bring “identity” to constructivism. I then show how teacher education has applied some key constructivist ideas, and I evaluate the soundness of constructivism as a framework for teacher education.

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

The concept of translation is redefined in a way that allows us to apply it to sign processes in non-humans. An approach to biology that makes organisms understandable via translation technology which is able to transmit the life of a sign system, the meaning of a biotext, without destroying it, is an aim for any biologist. Biotranslation, as distinct from eutranslation, occurs as a general process in message transfer between the Umwelten of organisms, including both intraspecific and in some cases also interspecific translation. Defining translation as transmission between Umwelten generalizes the notion of translation as transmission between languages. Since biological texts differ from human texts particularly at the level of syntactic elements, present to a lesser extent in the former, the concept of prosyntax is introduced for biological situations.

After its infant stage, a new science usually starts reflexing on its identity and theoretical roots. Sustainability science is not an exception, and the needs of self-reflection are even more pressing because of its inter- and trans-disciplinary characters, which involve a plenty of different approaches, theories and practices. In fact, such a variety does not provide a consistent ground for its future development. Without a solid grounding on a reliable base, the plethora of different theories that currently crowds its arena could in the near future produce a rejection from disciplinary specialized researchers, thus confining sustainability science to a scientific fad. Convincing theoretical roots can be found in systems science and cybernetics, and in particular second-order cybernetics, once amended from autopoiesis theory and radical constructivism, which raise serious doubts of validity and applicability. If sustainability science acknowledged its systemic and cybernetic nature and adopted second-order cybernetics in its amended version, it would gain a powerful reference paradigm and a theoretical common denominator and language to support its researchers and facilitate their knowledge exchange. From their part, systems science and cybernetics would be better understood and embraced as powerful sources of knowledge for understanding modern challenging problems, and second-order cybernetics, after decades of scarce relevance for other scientific disciplines, would be revitalized and would finally evolve adequately in a promising science and social practice.

Key words: complexity, cybernetics, first-person account, recursivity, second-order, self-organization, sustainability, systems science.

The enactive approach to cognitive science aims to provide an account of the mind that is both naturalistic and nonreductive. Psychological activity is viewed not as occurring within the individual organism but in the engagement between the motivated autonomous agent and their context (including their social context). The approach has been developing within the fields of philosophy, artificial life, and computational biology for the past two decades and is now growing within the domain of psychology more generally. In this short paper we outline the conceptual framework of the enactive approach. Illustrative research questions and methods for investigation are also broached, including some existing examples from theoretical, behavioral, and computational modeling research. It is suggested that an enactive psychology provides the basis for the conceptual framework of the enactive approach. Relevance: This paper defines a “enactive psychology” to describe the complex of relations between a cognitive agent and their environment.

Key words: Enactive approach, enaction, unifying psychology, theory of psychology, perception-action systems.

Translation has long been viewed as ‘code-switching’ either within or between languages. Hence, most translation discussions center on its linguistic and cultural aspects. However, the fundamental mechanism of ‘translation as interpretative semiosis’ has yet to be studied with appropriate rigor. Susan Petrilli (2008) has identified ‘iconicity’ as the key that enables translative semiosis. Nevertheless, as her model is restricted to a discussion of literary translation activity in verbal sign systems, a fundamental mechanism to explain translation as interpretative semiosis is still needed. By analyzing the interactions between the source sign (the translated) and the target sign (the translatant) in the translating process, it can be discerned that Humberto Maturana’s notion of autopoiesis may provide some crucial insights into translative semiosis. By identifying the autopoietic nature of translation, that is, the interlocked structural coupling between the Translated and Translatant, translation is no longer the ‘one-to-one-correspondence’ between sign systems, but rather a recursive process of interpretation – an interpretive semiosis. Moreover, it is by this autopoietic, self-productive mechanism of translation that I would suggest translation becomes a recursive generation of new inter-connections between semiotics systems.

Key words: translation, autopoiesis, semiosis, interpretation, umwelt