The extended mind thesis is about demarcation and use of words

The «extended mind thesis» sounds like a substantive thesis, the truth of which we should investigate. But actually the thesis a) turns about to be just a statement on where the demarcations for the «mental» are to be set (internal, external,…), i.e. it is about the «mark of the mental»; and b) the choice about the mark of the mental is a verbal choice, not a matter of scientific discovery. So, the «extended mind thesis » is a remark on how its supporters or opponents want to use the word ‘mind’, not a thesis of cognitive science or philosophy. The upshot of the extended mind discussion should not be to draw the line further out, but to drop the demarcation project

The use of narrative to provide a cohesive structure for a web based computing course

Narrative has long been used as an educational tool. This article explains how narrative, in the form of popular accounts, has been used to provide context, structure and broad appeal to a large-scale, entry-level university course on Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This course is delivered via the web with online tuition. Students' responses to the use of narrative and the scope of the material has been encouraging. It is argued that narrative performs an enculturation function that is often under-utilised in ICT education

Artificial Intelligence as a Culturological Problem

The article poses the question of cultural interpretation of artificial intelligence. It is revealed that in relation to artificial intelligence in modern culture there are at least two conflicting strategies. The first strategy is based on the idea of the superiority of artificial intelligence over the human intellect, and as a response serves as a breeding ground for the ideas of techno-apocalypse. The second strategy, which arose and developed within the framework of the Soviet Information Society project, sees in artificial intelligence the possibility of building a more perfect and just society.     Keywords: information society, artificial intelligence, induction of artificial intelligence, cultural problem, intercultural spac

Planning Smalltalk Behavior with Cultural Influences for Multiagent Systems

International audienceThere are several factors that inuence communicative behavior, such as gen- der, personality or culture. As virtual agents interact in a more and more human-like manner, their behavior should be dependent on social factors as well. Culture is a phenomenon that a_ects one's behavior without one realiz- ing it. Behavior is thus sometimes perceived as inappropriate because there is no awareness of the cultural gap. Thus, we think cultural background should also inuence the communication behavior of virtual agents. Behav- ioral di_erences are sometimes easy to recognize by humans but still hard to describe formally, to enable integration into a system that automatically generates culture-speci_c behavior. In our work, we focus on culture-related di_erences in the domain of casual Small Talk. Our model of culture-related di_erences in Small Talk behavior is based on _ndings described in the lit- erature as well as on a video corpus that was recorded in Germany and Japan. In a validation study, we provide initial evidence that our simulation of culture-speci_c Small Talk with virtual agents is perceived di_erently by human observers. We thus implemented a system that automatically gener- ates culture-speci_c Small Talk dialogs for virtual agents