scholarly journals Placebo From an Enactive Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iñigo R. Arandia ◽  
Ezequiel A. Di Paolo

Due to their complexity and variability, placebo effects remain controversial. We suggest this is also due to a set of problematic assumptions (dualism, reductionism, individualism, passivity). We critically assess current explanations and empirical evidence and propose an alternative theoretical framework—the enactive approach to life and mind—based on recent developments in embodied cognitive science. We review core enactive concepts such as autonomy, agency, and sense-making. Following these ideas, we propose a move from binary distinctions (e.g., conscious vs. non-conscious) to the more workable categories of reflective and pre-reflective activity. We introduce an ontology of individuation, following the work of Gilbert Simondon, that allow us to see placebo interventions not as originating causal chains, but as modulators and triggers in the regulation of tensions between ongoing embodied and interpersonal processes. We describe these interrelated processes involving looping effects through three intertwined dimensions of embodiment: organic, sensorimotor, and intersubjective. Finally, we defend the need to investigate therapeutic interactions in terms of participatory sense-making, going beyond the identification of individual social traits (e.g., empathy, trust) that contribute to placebo effects. We discuss resonances and differences between the enactive proposal, popular explanations such as expectations and conditioning, and other approaches based on meaning responses and phenomenological/ecological ideas.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Gordon

The objective of this paper is to assess the impact of data analytics (DA) and machine learning (ML) on accounting research.[1] As discussed in the paper, the inherent inductive nature of DA and ML is creating an important trend in the way accounting research is being conducted. That trend is the increasing utilization of inductive-based research among accounting researchers. Indeed, as a result of the recent developments with DA and ML, a rebalancing is taking place between inductive-based and deductive-based research in accounting.[2] In essence, we are witnessing the resurrection of inductive-based accounting research. A brief review of some empirical evidence to support the above argument is also provided in the paper.   


Author(s):  
Ezequiel Di Paolo ◽  
Hanne De Jaegher

We summarize some of the main proposals of the enactive approach to social understanding and discuss some common misreadings of the notion of participatory sense-making. The emphasis on the role played by social interaction in the enactive perspective is sometimes misinterpreted as the adoption of an interactionist stance, whereby individual processes are less relevant. This is not the case, and we proceed to explain and exemplify the central role played by individual agency, subpersonal processes and subjective personal experience in the framework of participatory sense-making. This is clear from how social interaction is defined as involving the co-arising of autonomous relational patterns, not under the full control of any participant, but without loss of individual autonomy of those engaged in the social encounter. We discuss how interactive patterns can sustain a deep entanglement between brain, body and interactive dynamics during social engagement, as well as the functional role played in some case by collective dynamics. The enactive approach is neither individualistic, nor interactionist. However, we express skepticism regarding the usefulness of hybrid approaches, which perpetuate dualistic distinctions between mind and body. Instead, the tensions in the notion of participatory sense-making are elaborated dialectically, demonstrating how complex forms of social agency, including language, develop from the primordial tension in participatory sense-making.


2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Froese ◽  
Ezequiel A. Di Paolo

There is a small but growing community of researchers spanning a spectrum of disciplines which are united in rejecting the still dominant computationalist paradigm in favor of the enactive approach. The framework of this approach is centered on a core set of ideas, such as autonomy, sense-making, emergence, embodiment, and experience. These concepts are finding novel applications in a diverse range of areas. One hot topic has been the establishment of an enactive approach to social interaction. The main purpose of this paper is to serve as an advanced entry point into these recent developments. It accomplishes this task in a twofold manner: (i) it provides a succinct synthesis of the most important core ideas and arguments in the theoretical framework of the enactive approach, and (ii) it uses this synthesis to refine the current enactive approach to social interaction. A new operational definition of social interaction is proposed which not only emphasizes the cognitive agency of the individuals and the irreducibility of the interaction process itself, but also the need for jointly co-regulated action. It is suggested that this revised conception of ‘socio-cognitive interaction’ may provide the necessary middle ground from which to understand the confluence of biological and cultural values in personal action.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 205920431879231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan van der Schyff ◽  
Andrea Schiavio ◽  
Ashley Walton ◽  
Valerio Velardo ◽  
Anthony Chemero

The phenomenon of creativity has received a growing amount of attention from scholars working across a range of disciplines. While this research has produced many important insights, it has also traditionally tended to explore creativity in terms of the reception of products or outcomes, conceiving of it as a cognitive process that is limited to the individual domain of the creative agent. More recently, however, researchers have begun to develop perspectives on creativity that highlight the patterns of adaptive embodied interaction that occur between multiple agents, as well as the broader socio-material milieu they are situated in. This has promoted new understandings of creativity, which is now often considered as a distributed phenomenon. Because music involves such a wide range of socio-cultural, bodily, technological, and temporal dimensions it is increasingly taken as a paradigmatic example for researchers who wish to explore creativity from this more relational perspective. In this article, we aim to contribute to this project by discussing musical creativity in light of recent developments in embodied cognitive science. More specifically, we will attempt to frame an approach to musical creativity based in an 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) understanding of cognition. We suggest that this approach may help us better understand creativity in terms of how interacting individuals and social groups bring forth worlds of meaning through shared, embodied processes of dynamic interactivity. We also explore how dynamical systems theory (DST) may offer useful tools for research and theory that align closely with the 4E perspective. To conclude, we summarize our discussion and suggest possibilities for future research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-295
Author(s):  
Sergio Rodríguez Gómez

Abstract In this article, a semiotic approach is proposed to explain how human agents use and give meaning to art in complex contexts. Inspired by the psycho-historical approach on art appreciation, which attempts to embrace psychological and cognitive aspects of art sense-making, as well as the art-historical context dependence of artworks, an extended theory is suggested: an agent's art use and interpretation can be described using three general categories of meaning grounding: phylogenetic recurrence, ontogenetic recurrence and collective recurrence. These categories explain how a certain meaning of a sign is possible and justifiable, supported by human agents' capabilities and purposes. This article also proposes that it is possible to narrate, using such categories of meaning grounding, how different agents enact art, that is, give meaning and act upon art in different circumstances. Finally, I offer some examples about how the model can be used in real art contexts. The objective of this narrative-enactive approach, even though it offers a limited and edited focus, is to offer an orderly and comprehensible method to explain the dynamic nature of art meaning and how biologic, individual and collective grounding and purposes intertwine.


2009 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter P. Lindquist

Abstract Given the evanescent quality of the spoken word, interpreters tend to be evaluated, trained, and selected on the basis of unproven theories and preconceptions about the cognitive processes and areas of difficulty associated with their work. A gap persists between theoretical work and empirical evidence of the processes proposed by such studies. Recent developments in technology are now being applied to interpreter performance evaluation, shedding light on aspects of interpreter performance that have previously resisted systematic analysis. It is now possible to examine large volumes of language in use, in both audio and textual realms. This paper presents the MRC model for analysis of interpreter performance and a study conducted using that method for the purpose of identifying interpreter training needs. Theoretical background, the MRC model, and the study outcomes and pedagogical implications are presented.


Target ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaisa Koskinen

Ever since the “cultural turn” in Translation Studies it has been commonplace to state that translation is an act of cultural mediation. However, the concept of culture as such has remained elusive. A number of questions remain unanswered: How can we define a culture? What kind of empirical evidence is needed to prove the existence of a particular culture? Looking for answers, I start with a personal note, with my own previous attempt at conceptualizing translators’ work in the European Commission by defining the EU institutions as a (multilingual and institutional) culture of its own. Responses to this model convey varying views of the concept of culture. By analyzing and contextualizing these responses it is my aim to provide some answers to the question of what kind of a construction culture is. The results of the analysis are then used to reflect on recent developments in Translation Studies.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 268
Author(s):  
José G. Vargas-Hernández

This paper on the question of the concept, role and functions of State, attempts to critically analyze recent developments and transformations. It is assumed that all existing State models to date are in ideological crisis that challenges the concept of State. The problem is that the empirical evidence of the role and functions of the State or the State system are different from a standpoint of a range of spheres of government, which generate the multiple requirements of the regulatory activity of the State. In the discussion some questions are identified and proposals that may be useful for analyzing the transformation of the State are formulated.


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