Determining what people feel and think when interacting with humans and machines

Any interactive software program must interpret the users’ actions and come up with an appropriate response that is intelligable and meaningful to the user. In most situations, the options of the user are determined by the software and hardware and the actions that can be carried out are unambiguous. The machine knows what it should do when the user carries out an action. In most cases, the user knows what he has to do by relying on conventions which he may have learned by having had a look at the instruction manual, having them seen performed by somebody else, or which he learned by modifying a previously learned convention. Some, or most, of the times he just finds out by trial and error. In user-friendly interfaces, the user knows, without having to read extensive manuals, what is expected from him and how he can get the machine to do what he wants. An intelligent interface is so-called, because it does not assume the same kind of programming of the user by the machine, but the machine itself can figure out what the user wants and how he wants it without the user having to take all the trouble of telling it to the machine in the way the machine dictates but being able to do it in his own words. Or perhaps by not using any words at all, as the machine is able to read off the intentions of the user by observing his actions and expressions. Ideally, the machine should be able to determine what the user wants, what he expects, what he hopes will happen, and how he feels

On the nature and role of intersubjectivity in communication

We outline a theory of human agency and communication and discuss the role that the capability to share (that is, intersubjectivity) plays in it. All the notions discussed are cast in a mentalistic and radically constructivist framework. We also introduce and discuss the relevant literature

The biosemiotic imagination in the Victorian frames of mind : Newman, Eliot and Welby

This thesis traces the development of thought in the philosophical and other writings of three nineteenth-century thinkers, whose work exemplifies that century’s attempts to think beyond the divisions of culture from nature and to reconcile empirical science with metaphysical truth. Drawing on nineteenth-century debates on the origin of language and evolutionary theory, the thesis argues that the ideas of John Henry Newman, George Eliot and Lady Victoria Welby were cultural precursors to the biosemiotic thought of the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, specifically in the way in which these three thinkers sought to find a ‘common grammar’ between natural and human practices. While only Lady Welby communicated with the scientist, logician and father of modern semiotics, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), all three contributed to the cultural sensibility that informed subsequent work in biology/ethology (Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), zoosemiotics (Thomas A. Sebeok (1920-2001), and the development of biosemiotics (Thomas A. Sebeok and Jesper Hoffmeyer (1943-present), Kalevi Kull (1952-present) among others. Each of these nineteenth-century writer’s intellectual development show strong parallels with the interdisciplinary endeavour of biosemiotics. The latter’s observation that biology is semiotics, its postulation of the continuity between the natural and cultural world through semiosis and evolutionary semiotic scaffolding its emphasis on the coordination of organic life processes on all levels, from simple cells to human beings, via semiotic interactions that depend on interpretation, communication and learning, and its consequent refusal of Cartesian divide, all find distinct resonances with these earlier thinkers. The thesis thus argues that Newman, Eliot and Welby all gave articulation to what the thesis identifies as the growth of a ‘biosemiotic imagination.’ It argues that Newman, Eliot and Lady Welby envisaged a unity, or a holistic understanding, of life based on a European developmental tradition of biology, philosophy and language which was familiar to Charles Darwin himself. This evolutionary ontology called forth a new epistemology grounded in a mode of unconscious creative inference (biosemiotic imagination) akin to Charles S. Peirce’s concept of abduction. Abduction is the logical operation which introduces a new idea and, as such, is the only source of adaptive and creative growth. For Peirce, it is closely tied to the growth of knowledge via the evolutionary action of sign relations. The thesis shows how these thinkers conceptualised their own version of what I suggest can be understood as this biosemiotic imagination and the implications this has for understanding creativity in nature and culture. For John Henry Newman, it was a common source of inspiration in religion and science. For George Eliot, it lay at the basis of any creative process, natural and cultural, between which it forged a link. Similarly to Eliot, Lady Victoria Welby saw abduction as a signifying process that subtends creativity both in nature and culture

An ecological method for the sampling of nonverbal signalling behaviours of young children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD)

- Background: Profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) are a complex range of disabilities that affect the general health and wellbeing of the individual and their capacity to interact and learn. - Method: We developed a new methodology to capture the nonsymbolic signalling behaviours of children with PMLD within the context of a face-to-face interaction with a caregiver to provide analysis at a micro-level of descriptive detail incorporating the use of the ELAN digital video software. - Conclusion: The signalling behaviours of participants in a natural, everyday interaction can be better understood with the use of this innovation in methodology, which is predicated on the ecology of communication. Recognition of the developmental ability of the participants is an integral factor within that ecology. The method presented establishes an advanced account of the modalities through which a child affected by PMLD is able to communicate

Socio-Economic Rights and the South African Transition: The Role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

This article examines a part of a foundational principle of the South African Bill of Rights that individuals are entitled to a range of rights that ensure individual security, freedom, and well-being, and that these rights are interdependent and the crucial role of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the TRC ) in laying the groundwork for the fulfillment of those rights

Developing Theory Through Integrating Human and Machine Pattern Recognition

New forms of digital trace data are becoming ubiquitous. Traditional methods of qualitative research that aim at developing theory, however, are often overwhelmed by the sheer volume of such data. To remedy this situation, qualitative researchers can engage not only with digital traces, but also with computational tools that are increasingly able to model digital trace data in ways that support the process of developing theory. To facilitate such research, this paper crafts a research design framework based on the philosophical tradition of pragmatism, which provides intellectual tools for dealing with multifaceted digital trace data, and offers an abductive analysis approach suitable for leveraging both human and machine pattern recognition. This framework provides opportunities for researchers to engage with digital traces and computational tools in a way that is sensitive to qualitative researchers’ concerns about theory development. The paper concludes by showing how this framework puts human imaginative capacities at the center of the push for qualitative researchers to engage with computational tools and digital trace

Action, Abduction And Plan Recognition

none1In the forthcoming distributed autonomous robotic systems it will be useful for a robot to recognize other robots' goals and plans from visual information. Till now, much emphasis has been given to plan inference. This paper is about goal recognition: having recognised a plan (may be after the entire plan has been performed), try to recognise which can be the actor's reasons for the plan to be performed. If the actor's planner possesses sufficient inferential capabilities, then goal recognition is not a trivial question. This paper shows that, under simple hypotheses on the nature of the planner that guides an actor's behaviour, an observer can recognize the actor's goal by means of a simple clause-based abductive reasoning. Furthermore, the paper shows how goal recognition can be regarded as a useful step in plan inference. This results refer to the prototypical state-based STRIPS plannerAldo Franco DragoniDragoni, Aldo Franc