Shedding Light on the Extended Mind: HoloLens, Holograms, and Internet-Extended Knowledge

The application of extended mind theory to the Internet and Web yields the possibility of Internet-extended knowledge—a form of extended knowledge that arises as a result of an individual's interactions with the online environment. The present paper seeks to advance our understanding of Internet-extended knowledge by describing the functionality of a real-world application, called the HoloArt app. In part, the goal of the paper is illustrative: it is intended to show how recent advances in mixed reality, cloud-computing, and machine intelligence might be combined so as to yield a putative case of Internet-extended knowledge. Beyond this, however, the paper is intended to support the philosophical effort to understand the notions of extended knowledge and the extended mind. In particular, the HoloArt app raises questions about the universality of some of the criteria that have been used to evaluate putative cases of cognitive extension. The upshot is a better appreciation of the way in which claims about extended knowledge and the extended mind might be affected by a consideration of technologically-advanced resources.

Withering Minds: towards a unified embodied mind theory of personal identity for understanding dementia

A prominent view on personal identity over time, Jeff McMahan’s ‘Embodied Mind Account’ (2002) holds that we cease to exist only once our brains can no longer sustain the basic capacity to uphold consciousness. One of the many implications of this view on identity persistence is that we continue to exist throughout even the most severe cases of dementia, until our consciousness irreversibly shuts down. In this paper, I argue that, while the most convincing of prominent accounts of personal identity over time, McMahan’s account faces serious challenges in explanatory power of dementias and related neurodegenerative conditions. Particularly, this becomes visible in the face of emerging methods for neural tissue regeneration, and the possibility of ‘re-emerging patients’. I argue that medical professionals’ neglecting qualitative aspects of identity risks resulting in grave misunderstandings in decision-making processes, and ethically objectionable outcomes in future practices. Finally, I propose revisions which could potentially salvage the great benefits that Embodied Mind Theory still can bring to the field of dementia care in terms of understanding life, death, and identity across the lifespan.

Theory of Mind in Nonhuman Primates

Social life demands complex strategies for coordinating and competing with others. In humans, these strategies are supported by rich cognitive mechanisms, such as theory of mind. Theory of mind (i.e., mental state attribution, mentalizing, or mindreading) is the ability to track the unobservable mental states, like desires and beliefs, that guide others’ actions. Deeply social animals, like most nonhuman primates, would surely benefit from the adept capacity to interpret and predict others’ behavior that theory of mind affords. Yet, after forty years of investigation, the extent to which nonhuman primates represent the minds of others remains a topic of contentious debate. In the present chapter, we review evidence consistent with the possibility that monkeys and apes are capable of inferring others’ goals, perceptions, and beliefs. We then evaluate the quality of that evidence and point to the most prominent alternative explanations to be addressed by future research. Finally, we take a more broadly phylogenetic perspective, to identify evolutionary modifications to social cognition that have emerged throughout primate evolutionary history and to consider the selective pressures that may have driven those modifications. Taken together, this approach sheds light on the complex mechanisms that define the social minds of humans and other primates.

Intelligence as Accurate Prediction

This paper argues that intelligence can be approximated by the ability to produce accurate predictions. It is further argued that general intelligence can be approximated by context dependent predictive abilities combined with the ability to use working memory to abstract away contextual information. The flexibility associated with general intelligence can be understood as the ability to use selective attention to focus on specific aspects of sensory impressions to identify patterns, which can then be used to predict events in novel situations and environments. The argumentation synthesizes Godfrey-Smith’s environmental complexity theory, adding the notion of niche broadness as well as changes concerning the view of cognition and control, and Hohwy’s predictive mind theory, making explicit the significance of accuracy as a composite of trueness and precision where the nervous system acts as a distributed controller motivating actions that keep the body in homeostasis.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF THE IMPLICIT MIND THEORY AT PEOPLE DEPENDENT ON PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES

The article presents the psychological analysis of the implicit mind theory and its research methods. The main problems of empirical research in psychology are briefly described. The main problems of research of the mind theory are highlighted; and the status of this phenomenon’s in scientific psychology is defined. The implicit mind theory is defined as a psychological quality expressed in the ability to explain and attribute mental states – beliefs, desires, emotions, knowledge, etc. – to themselves and others; as well as understanding that others have different beliefs, desires, intentions, and attitudes. Current difficulties in the research on the implicit mind theory are described. Age-related features of formation of the implicit mind theory are depicted. The latest scientific studies on the implicit mind theory are highlighted. Biological correlates of the theory are shown. It is also described that in the case of an alcohol addiction, certain brain areas that are known to be neurological correlates of the implicit mind theory are damaged. The main research methods, which are separated into three groups, are highlighted. The first group includes methods that study the implicit mind theory using behavioural experiment with special tasks. The second group includes methods that use semi-structured interview. The third group includes methods where respondents are asked to identify an emotion or an affective state of another person based on the visual stimuli (photo, picture etc.).The main methods of research of this psychological phenomenon, features, procedure, advantages, and disadvantages are described in detail. The most appropriate methods to examine addicts’ implicit mind theory are proposed. The procedure of investigation and psychological assessment of the implicit mind theory for people dependent on psychoactive substances is offered.

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL HARMONY THROUGH EMPATHY

Empathy, a concept that involves an interpersonal experience is found in all aspects of the social universe, especially in prosocial behavior, morality and regulation of aggression. In the context of the major medical and social crisis caused by the pandemic, the need to develop empathic social skills becomes a pressing need. Anxiety generated by the threat of disease and death has led to the emergence of paradoxical individual or social behaviors. Thus, by disturbing the cognitive harmony of the individual - irrational thoughts in relation to contamination and illness or on the contrary the denial of the disease was destructured emotional harmony (anxiety, depression, psychosomatic manifestations) with adverse consequences at the individual and subsequent social level. The objective manifestation of disharmonious cognitions and emotions materialized in the manifestation of maladaptive behaviors. The present paper is an analysis of the two theories on empathy - Simulation Theory and Mind Theory in order to improve prosocial behavior in a pandemic context. Studies show the significant influences of social and cultural factors on the empathic capacity of the individual. In this sense, it is important to emphasize that empathic skills can be learned and developed in relation to the environment and the social context. Understanding the concept of social empathy is important by being able to provide a model of thinking and action that opens new ways of contextual approach to the current situation that could ultimately lead to alleviating the crisis and improving social conditions by adopting an adaptive behavior in according to the limits imposed by the new epidemiological situation.

Cartography of a Pedagogical Experience: Architecture as a (In) Discipline in Process

This article focuses on the experience of teaching and teaching-learning relationswith a focus on the creative processes in the Architecture and Urbanism Course, more specifically in a curricular unit of Architecture Design. The reflection proposed here takes into account the body-environment relationship as a methodological matrix for teaching and investigates the way in which students understand, interpret and act from their own body’s experiences in space. The theoretical subsidies that support this approach are related to the studies of cognition, mainly from the perspective of the embodied mind theory developed by VARELA, THOMPSON, & ROSCH (1992) in addition to JOHNSON (2007) and his theory of meaning-making, and studies developed by KASTRUP (1999) in his theory of inventiveness. We seek in these theorists the possibility of weaving a discussion that understands the process of creation as an unceasing movement of exchanges between the body and the environment. In this sense, we developed and applied a methodology that aims to explore different experiences of the body in space as mediators of the creative process in architecture. Removing students from the closed space of the classroom, getting them out of chairs and desks and returning the movement to the bodies and the rediscovery of environmental perceptions is the starting point for this methodology developed in the light of CARERI’s drift theory (2013). The drift gains a very valuable sense here, since by launching the body into space in search of unexpected encounters, we are exploring the powers of this encounter so that students can make this event a fertile field for the creation process, returning them to the fecund environment of discovery as opposed to the sterile space of the classroom. The (in) disciplinary character of this methodology, in the most radicalsense of transdisciplinarity, makes the body and space have their blurred limits, and can thus co-evolve in motion, giving rise to creative processes, in which students they invent themselves at the same time as they invent the world in which they learn. All cartographies developed in the student creation processes in this course are presented on the social network Instagram, where the work teams share their processes, appropriating the tools and languages specific to this media.