Cognitive agency in sociocultural evolution

Models of sociocultural evolution generally study the population dynamics of cultural traits given known biases in social learning. Cognitive agency, understood as the dynamics underlying a specific agent’s adoption of a given trait, is essentially irrelevant in this framework. This article argues that although implementing and instrumenting agency in computational models is fundamentally challenging, it is ultimately possible and would help us overcome major limitations in our understanding of sociocultural dynamics.Indeed, the behaviour of humans is not causally generated by a set of predefined behavioural laws, but by the situated activity of their cognitive architecture. Idealised models of biased transmission certainly help us understand specific features of population dynamics. However, they distract us from the deep intrication of the cognitive and ecological processes underlying sociocultural evolution, and erase their embodied, subjective nature.In line with the earlier “Thinking Through Other Minds” account of sociocultural evolution, this article highlights how the Active Inference framework can help us implement and instrument computational models that address these limitations. Such models would not only help ground our understanding of sociocultural evolution in the underlying cognitive dynamics, but also help solve (or frame) open questions in the study of ritual, relation between cultural transmission and innovation, as well as scales of cultural evolution.

NEW VISION OF CONCEPT EUROPE (A LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE)

This article presents a study of the concept EUROPE, done in the area of cognitive linguistics. The concept EUROPE is considered a conceptual quantum of structured knowledge, possessing of different meanings. The article analyzes the concept EUROPE from a linguistic point of view, which allowed to reveal a number of specific features of its semantics, to get a more comprehensive and diverse view of it by constructing cognitive schemes implementing concept EUROPE, as well as to identify basic metaphorical models. Involvement of methods of conceptual analysis allows to present the analised concept in the form of a certain conceptual model, a special way organized conceptual scheme. With the help of the conceptual model of the Subject frame the cognitive dynamics of the concept development in the European integration discourse is revealed. Political metaphor is one of the most common and effective policy tools. The research material is characterized by the use of metaphors belonging to such basic types, which are related to the reference spheres as the sociomorphic sphere, the anthropomorphic sphere, the sphere of artifacts and the sphere of nature. Conceptual metaphors of European integration discourse use in their codes the conceptual fields “space”, “travel”, “movement”, “construction”, “work results”, “family relations”, “nature”, “sports”, “art”, etc.

Simulated visual hallucinations in virtual reality enhance cognitive flexibility

Historically, psychedelic drugs are known to modulate cognitive flexibility, a central aspect of cognition permitting adaptation to changing environmental demands. Despite proof suggesting phenomenological similarities between artificially-induced and actual psychedelic altered perception, experimental evidence is still lacking about whether the former is also able to modulate cognitive flexibility. To address this, we measure participants' cognitive flexibility through behavioral tasks after the exposure to virtual reality panoramic videos and their hallucinatory-like counterparts generated by the DeepDream algorithm. Results show that the estimated semantic network has a flexible structure when preceded by altered videos. Crucially, following the simulated psychedelic exposure, individuals also show an attenuated contribution of the automatic process and chaotic dynamics underlying the decision process. This suggests that simulated altered perceptual phenomenology enhances cognitive flexibility, presumably due to a reorganization in the cognitive dynamics that facilitates the exploration of uncommon decision strategies and inhibits automated choices.

How Does Business Strategy Treat Cognition?

<p>Strategizing is a human cognitive activity. While this may suggest that business strategy would focus on human cognition, this thesis finds the opposite – that business strategy overwhelmingly treats cognition superficially, and that business strategy consequently is limited and underperforms. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn that places cognition at the centre of business strategy and thereby enables the enhanced research and execution of business strategy. To research the question “how does business strategy treat cognition?” requires an epistemology that admits cognition. Having found no such epistemology, this thesis creates its own – Pragmatic Cognitivism. A research method that is based upon the works of Michel Foucault, and which aligns with this epistemology, is adopted to analyse two mainstream business strategy discourses and two academic business strategy discourses. This analysis finds that business strategy, driven by Enlightenment thinking and human sciences, perceives itself to be the problem and creates a large variety of approaches to strategy and strategy solutions. The development of these approaches establishes both the discipline of strategy and the role of the strategist. The analysis concludes that business strategy often ignores cognition and, when it is considered, it is treated only as a side issue. Furthermore, strategy solutions are not cognitive solutions, tasks such as learning and designing strategy are not considered, there is no consideration of knowledge of strategy and strategy intentions, and the subconscious is rarely mentioned. Conditions that have led to this limited treatment of cognition include a scientific approach that does not easily cater for cognition and the complexities of understanding the mind. For business strategy, this has resulted in methodological approaches, a limited scope, and underperformance. Business strategy has developed in such a way that its own context is the limiting factor – business strategy cannot perform well because its core ingredient, cognition, is left untreated. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn in business strategy that makes cognition the centre of strategy discourses. This is not to wholly reject current discourses, but it is a fundamental shift in how business strategy is conceived, researched, and executed. By placing cognition at the centre of strategy interpretations, strategy can potentially develop higher levels of performance rather than being structurally constrained. The necessary starting point for such a cognitive turn is epistemological – to enable cognition to be well thought. Pragmatic Cognitivism is recommended as an epistemology that enables the reinstatement of the concepts of intuition and judgment, the inclusion of the subconscious as a cognitive factor, and the consideration of group cognitive dynamics. Such a cognitive turn is not an increased drawing of theory from contemporary psychology – it is a turn to concepts initially found in pre-behavioural approaches. This thesis seeks to understand business strategy in the present by exploring how business strategy has treated human cognition in the past.</p>

How Does Business Strategy Treat Cognition?

<p>Strategizing is a human cognitive activity. While this may suggest that business strategy would focus on human cognition, this thesis finds the opposite – that business strategy overwhelmingly treats cognition superficially, and that business strategy consequently is limited and underperforms. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn that places cognition at the centre of business strategy and thereby enables the enhanced research and execution of business strategy. To research the question “how does business strategy treat cognition?” requires an epistemology that admits cognition. Having found no such epistemology, this thesis creates its own – Pragmatic Cognitivism. A research method that is based upon the works of Michel Foucault, and which aligns with this epistemology, is adopted to analyse two mainstream business strategy discourses and two academic business strategy discourses. This analysis finds that business strategy, driven by Enlightenment thinking and human sciences, perceives itself to be the problem and creates a large variety of approaches to strategy and strategy solutions. The development of these approaches establishes both the discipline of strategy and the role of the strategist. The analysis concludes that business strategy often ignores cognition and, when it is considered, it is treated only as a side issue. Furthermore, strategy solutions are not cognitive solutions, tasks such as learning and designing strategy are not considered, there is no consideration of knowledge of strategy and strategy intentions, and the subconscious is rarely mentioned. Conditions that have led to this limited treatment of cognition include a scientific approach that does not easily cater for cognition and the complexities of understanding the mind. For business strategy, this has resulted in methodological approaches, a limited scope, and underperformance. Business strategy has developed in such a way that its own context is the limiting factor – business strategy cannot perform well because its core ingredient, cognition, is left untreated. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn in business strategy that makes cognition the centre of strategy discourses. This is not to wholly reject current discourses, but it is a fundamental shift in how business strategy is conceived, researched, and executed. By placing cognition at the centre of strategy interpretations, strategy can potentially develop higher levels of performance rather than being structurally constrained. The necessary starting point for such a cognitive turn is epistemological – to enable cognition to be well thought. Pragmatic Cognitivism is recommended as an epistemology that enables the reinstatement of the concepts of intuition and judgment, the inclusion of the subconscious as a cognitive factor, and the consideration of group cognitive dynamics. Such a cognitive turn is not an increased drawing of theory from contemporary psychology – it is a turn to concepts initially found in pre-behavioural approaches. This thesis seeks to understand business strategy in the present by exploring how business strategy has treated human cognition in the past.</p>

Emergence and Complexity

The chapter argues that Beckett’s exploration of the mind is not just complicated, but targets non-linear, interacting, networking dynamics in cognition that, according to contemporary theories of complexity, classify the mind as a proper complex system. Within contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind, it is increasingly suggested that the brain should be regarded as a complex system (see, e.g., Gazzaniga 2012): as the physical site of decentralized interactions and distributed, looping causality among its neurons. Within this complex account of human cognition, also the mind and its mental properties, including consciousness and a sense of self, have been interpreted through the conceptual lenses of complex system theory. Theories of complexity in cognition, therefore, can help us thread together, and collectively reconsider, all the cognitive dynamics, patterns of emersions, and laws of the mind that Beckett has modeled when exploring consciousness and subjective experience. An emergentist reappraisal of prior chapters should give us a more complex, more global interpretation of Beckett’s early call for a formal access to (as a modeling exploration of) the “recondite relations of emergal” (D, 16) within human cognition. Also, it should support an interpretive shift from a view of Beckett as a complicated author to an account of him as an explorer of the mind’s complexity. The chapter begins by addressing the kind of problems complexity poses to modeling in general, and to narrative modeling in particular.

The Logic Fundamentals of Machine Consciousness: Theory of Tri-State

For a long time, the system of scientific methodology has been composed of logic, empirical (falsification), qualitative, quantitative and deterministic, and corresponding thinking tools. However, under the background of complexity science, the category of methodology should be changed, that is, on the basis of traditional methodology, non-classical logic, hierarchy, stereotype (topological invariant) and uncertainty should be added. This is also the main idea behind the “Thoery of Tri-state” in the first part of this paper. The core idea in the theory of “Tri-state” is “Tri-state Logic” (“positive | negative | uncertain state”). The ontology of “Tri-state Logic” aims to reveal the meta space-time movement law of things transforming from one form to another, that is, the coupling of time and space in the development of things, and the orientation and evolution of the continuity of things. The mathematical basis of “Tri-state Logic” is knot theory and dynamics theory. The second part of this paper designs a machine-consciousness model framework based on the “Theory of Tri-state” (Tri-state Logic). Its research starting point is the perspective of cognitive dynamics (cognitive psychology + dynamics), which is very different from the research ideas proposed by Minsky's “The Emotion Machine”. At the same time, this paper also tries to answer Turing's questions from different space-time dimensions, and gives an experimental idea of “kindergarten game” by comparing Turing's “imitation game”.