The explicit investigation of anticipations in relation to adaptive behavior is a recent approach. This chapter first provides psychological background that motivates and inspires the study of anticipations in the adaptive behavior field. Next, a basic framework for the study of anticipations in adaptive behavior is suggested. Different anticipatory mechanisms are identified and characterized. First fundamental distinctions are drawn between implicit anticipatory behavior, payoff anticipatory behavior, sensory anticipatory behavior, and state anticipatory behavior. A case study allows further insights into the drawn distinctions.

What is the enactive approach to cognition? Over the last 15 years this banner has grown to become a respectable alternative to traditional frameworks in cognitive science. It is at the same time a label with different interpretations and upon which different doubts have been cast. This paper elaborates on the core ideas that define the enactive approach and their implications: autonomy, sensemaking, emergence, embodiment, and experience. These are coherent, radical and very powerful concepts that establish clear methodological guidelines for research. The paper also looks at the problems that arise from taking these ideas seriously. The enactive approach has plenty of room for elaboration in many different areas and many challenges to respond to. In particular, we concentrate on the problems surrounding several theories of value-appraisal and valuegeneration. The enactive view takes the task of understanding meaning and value very seriously and elaborates a proper scientific alternative to reductionist attempts to tackle these issues by functional localization. Another area where the enactive framework can make a significant contribution is social interaction and

The central role of the face in social interaction and non-verbal communication suggest we explore facial action as a means of musical expression. This paper presents the design, implementation, and preliminary studies of a novel system utilizing face detection and optic flow algorithms to associate facial movements with sound synthesis in a topographically specific fashion. We report on our experience with various gesture-to-sound mappings and applications, and describe our preliminary experiments at musical performance using the system.

Constructed Narratives is a tangible social interface designed for use in public spaces where people have the opportunity to encounter the game and subsequently learn about each other. The hardware and software system architecture developed for this project could be applied for experimental computer-based interfaces for several human computer interaction domains including collaborative learning (CSCL), and collaborative design activities in the tradition of computer supported collaborative work (CSCW). The current domain explored for Constructed Narratives is that of computer systems designed to enable shared experience through play, or computer supported collaborative play (CSCP).

Motivated by a consideration of the machine-mediated nature of human interaction in web-based tutoring, we propose the construction of artificial expressions, displays which reflect users ’ felt bodily experience, to support the development of greater empathy in remote interaction. To demonstrate the concept of artificial expressions we have implemented a system for the real-time visual display of affective signals such as respiration, pulse, and skin-conductivity which, combined with contextual information, may help partners in a learning interaction to estimate one another’s level of arousal, stress, or boredom, for example. We have employed this system in a trial learning situation for the remote teaching and learning of Kanji, the Chinese characters used in written Japanese.

Abstract: The present focus on embodiment in cognitive science undervalues concepts such as convention/norm, representation and consciousness. I argue that these concepts constitute essential properties of language, and this makes it problematic for “embodiment theories ” to account for human language and cognition. These difficulties are illustrated by examining a particular, highly influential approach to embodied cognition, that of Lakoff and Johnson (1999), and exposing the problematic character of the notion of the “cognitive unconscious”. To attempt a reconciliation between embodiment and language, I turn to the concept of (bodily) mimesis, and propose the notion of mimetic schema as a mediator between the individual human body and collective language. For years now, leading representatives of theoretical linguistics have been arguing that humans, being governed by a blind ‘language instinct’, can be exhaustively described in physico-biological terms. … [T]his conception has been shown to be fundamentally false. Humans are also, and crucially, social, normative, and conscious beings, occasionally capable of acts of free will. Esa Itkonen, What is Language? 1.

This guide is intended to assist in the use of the DVD Daniel Dennett, Magic of

that have worked so well in the rest of science. This third-person methodology, dubbed heterophenomenology (phenomenology of another not oneself), is, I have claimed, the sound way to take the first person point of view as seriously as it can be taken. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10, No. ??, 2003, pp. ??--?? Correspondence: D.C. Dennett, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University, Medford, MA 02155-5555, USA. Email: daniel.dennett@tufts.edu To place heterophenomenology in context, consider the following ascending scale of methods of scientific investigation: experiments conducted on anaesthetized animals; experiments conducted on awake animals; experiments on human subjects conducted in `behaviorese' --- subjects are treated as much as possible like laboratory rats, trained to criterion with the use of small rewards, with minimal briefing and debriefing, etc.; experiments in which human subjects collaborate with experimenters --- making suggestions, interacting verbal

There is no zero-point of the social relatedness of the individual, no “beginning ” or sharp break when he steps into society as if from outside as a being untouched by the network and then begins to link up with other human beings. On the contrary, just as parents are needed to bring a child into the world, just as the mother feeds the child first with her blood and then with nourishment from her body, the individual already exists, on the most fundamental level, in relation to others, and this relation has a particular structure specific to his society. He takes on his individual stamp from the history of these relationships, these dependences, and so, in a broader context, from the history of the whole human network within which he grows up and lives. [...] Robinson Crusoe, too, bears the imprint of a particular society, a particular nation and class. Isolated from all relations to them as he is on his island, he behaves, wishes and plans by their standard... Norbert Elias (1939/1991), p.27 As alternatives to the dominant computationalist approach to cognition develop toward scientific maturity, the taken-for-granted departure and end points of mind science begin to be questioned more systematically. The simple and apparently given starting points are often revealed as presupposing the more complex stages that are relegated to longer term explanatory goals. Similarly, the apparently complex feat is sometimes shown to be simpler to explain and more basic once certain methodological and conceptual blinders are removed. We witness this pattern in various regions of cognitive science, for instance, over the last two decades, in the

Abstract The life–mind continuity thesis holds that mind is prefigured in life and that mind belongs to life. The biggest challenge faced by proponents of this thesis is to show how an explanatory framework that accounts for basic biological processes can be systematically extended to incorporate the highest reaches of human cognition. We suggest that this apparent ‘cognitive gap ’ between minimal and human forms of life appears insurmountable largely because of the methodological individualism that is prevalent in cognitive science. Accordingly, a twofold strategy is used to show how a consideration of sociality can address both sides of the cognitive gap: (1) it is argued from a systemic perspective that inter-agent interactions can extend the behavioral domain of even the simplest agents and (2) it is argued from a phenomenological perspective that the cognitive attitude characteristic of adult human beings is essentially intersubjectively constituted, in particular with respect to the possibility of perceiving objects as detached from our own immediate concerns. These two complementary considerations of the constitutive role of inter-agent interactions for mind and cognition indicate that sociality is an indispensable element of the life–mind continuity thesis and of cognitive science more generally. Keywords Enaction. Life–mind continuity. Phenomenology. Intersubjectivity. Agency. Social cognition