A Cognitively Founded Model of the Social Emergence of Lexicon

This paper suggests a model of the process through which a set of symbols, initially without any intrinsic meaning, acquires endogenously a conventional and socially shared meaning. This model has two related aspects. The first is the cognitive aspect, represented by the process through which each agent processes the information gathered during the interactions with other agents. In this paper, the agents are endowed with the cognitive skills necessary to categorize the input in a lexicographic way, a categorization process that is implemented by the means of data mining techniques. The second aspect is the social one, represented by the process of reiterate interactions among the agents who compose a population. The framework of this social process is that of evolutionary game theory, with a population of agents who are randomly matched in each period in order to play a game that, in this paper, is a kind of signaling game. The simulations show that the emergence of a socially shared meaning associated to a combination of symbols is, under the assumptions of this model, a statistically inevitable occurrence.Social Conventions, Fast and Frugal Heuristic Theory, Emergence of Lexicon, Data Mining, Signaling Games

Disentangling the meanings of development

Development is a powerful but hopelessly slippery and evasive concept, yet scholars keep on defining and redefining it. Lately, it has been suggested that it is not possible to grapple with all the meanings of development and it is better to be understood as a temporary (assemblage'. This article takes issue with this suggestion. It argues that development is a historically evolved concept which has acquired many meanings in the course of its own development. Ambiguity and polyvalence are its integral features: without them it could not work as a concept. Yet it has meanings - even a core meaning. Concepts are words and the meanings of words are in the ways they are used. In practice, development is understood simultaneously as (1) a goal; (2) a process leading to that goal; and (3) an intervention triggering such a process. This composite meaning has been there since colonialism and seems to carry on despite all the announcements of its death. With it development continues to retain much of its evocative power. As long as this is the case we need development studies to sort out its intricacies. © 2014, Finnish Anthropological Society. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe

Constructing a concept of number

Numbers are concepts whose content, structure, and organization are influenced by the material forms used to represent and manipulate them. Indeed, as argued here, it is the inclusion of multiple forms (distributed objects, fingers, single- and two-dimensional forms like pebbles and abaci, and written notations) that is the mechanism of numerical elaboration. Further, variety in employed forms explains at least part of the synchronic and diachronic variability that exists between and within cultural number systems. Material forms also impart characteristics like linearity that may persist in the form of knowledge and behaviors, ultimately yielding numerical concepts that are irreducible to and functionally independent of any particular form. Material devices used to represent and manipulate numbers also interact with language in ways that reinforce or contrast different aspects of numerical cognition. Not only does this interaction potentially explain some of the unique aspects of numerical language, it suggests that the two are complementary but ultimately distinct means of accessing numerical intuitions and insights. The potential inclusion of materiality in contemporary research in numerical cognition is advocated, both for its explanatory power, as well as its influence on psychological, behavioral, and linguistic aspects of numerical cognition

Reinventing grounded theory: some questions about theory, ground and discovery

Grounded theory’s popularity persists after three decades of broad-ranging critique. In this article three problematic notions are discussed—‘theory,’ ‘ground’ and ‘discovery’—which linger in the continuing use and development of grounded theory procedures. It is argued that far from providing the epistemic security promised by grounded theory, these notions—embodied in continuing reinventions of grounded theory—constrain and distort qualitative inquiry, and that what is contrived is not in fact theory in any meaningful sense, that ‘ground’ is a misnomer when talking about interpretation and that what ultimately materializes following grounded theory procedures is less like discovery and more akin to invention. The procedures admittedly provide signposts for qualitative inquirers, but educational researchers should be wary, for the significance of interpretation, narrative and reflection can be undermined in the procedures of grounded theory