Representational redescription and cognitive architectures

We focus on Karmiloff-Smith's Representational redescription model, arguing that it poses some problems concerning the architecture of a redescribing system. To discuss the topic, we consider the implicit/explicit dichotomy and the relations between natur al language and the language of thought. We argue that the model regards how knowledge is employed rather than how it is represented in the system

Movement, Action, and Situation: Presence in Virtual Environments

Presence is commonly defined as the subjective feeling of "being there". It has been mainly conceived of as deriving from immersion, interaction, and social and narrative involvement with suitable technology. We argue that presence depends on a suitable integration of aspects relevant to an agent's movement and perception, to her actions, and to her conception of the overall situation in which she finds herself, as well as on how these aspects mesh with the possibilities for action afforded in the interaction with the virtual environment

A situated cognition perspective on presence

During interaction with computer-based 3-D simulations like virtual reality, users may experience a sense of involvement called presence. Presence is commonly defined as the subjective feeling of "being there". We discuss the state of the art in this inno vative research area and introduce a situated cognition perspective on presence. We argue that presence depends on the proper integration of aspects relevant to an agent's movement and perception, to her actions, and to her conception of the overall situ a tion in which she finds herself, as well as on how these aspects mesh with the possibilities for action afforded in the interaction with the artifact. We also aim at showing that studies of presence offer a test-bed for different theories of situated co gnition.

Interpersonal responsibilities and communicative intentions

When they interact in everyday situations, people constantly create new fragments of social reality: they do so when they make promises or agreements, but also when they submit requests or answer questions, when they greet each other or express gratitude. This type of social reality ‘in the small,’ that we call interpersonal reality, is normative in nature as all other kinds of social reality; what makes it somewhat special is that its normativity applies to the very same persons who create it in their interactions. We first show that interpersonal reality can be accounted for in terms of a suitable concept of interpersonal responsibility, which in turn can be understood as a form of second-personal responsibility (in Darwall’s sense), intentionally co-constructed by two or more agents for themselves. Then we introduce certain significant subspecies of interpersonal responsibility, namely mutual and joint responsibility, and compare them with Gilbert’s notion of joint commitment. Finally we discuss how relationships of interpersonal responsibility can be brought about through communicative acts, understood as actions performed with underlying communicative intentions

On normative cognition, and why it matters for cognitive pragmatics

In Cognitive pragmatics: The mental processes of communication (2011), Bruno Bara presents a detailed summary of a theory of human communication, called "cognitive pragmatics,” which he has been developing since the 1980s together with a number of colleagues, and has been presented in several scientific articles and in a recent book (Bara 2010). The basic tenets of this theory are that communication is a cooperative activity, in which human agents engage intentionally, and that for communication to take place successfully all the participants must share certain mental states. Coherently with these assumptions, cognitive pragmatics aims at clarifying what mental states are constitutive of communication, and what cognitive structures underlie the cooperative activities involved in communication. To this position we are strongly sympathetic. However, we think that the theoretical framework currently offered by cognitive pragmatics is inadequate to account for the cooperative nature of human communication. In particular, we believe that to deal with human cooperation, the types of mental states considered by cognitive pragmatics should be extended; that the concepts of conversation and behavior game do not adequately explain the dynamics of human communication; and that the role of communicative intentions is not sufficiently clarified. In this commentary we first discuss the issue of collective activities (Section 1). Next we consider some problems related to conversation and behavior games (Section 2), and bring in the issue of normativity, that we consider as a crucial component of human interaction (Section 3). We then discuss the relationship between communicative intentions and normativity (Section 4), and finally draw some conclusions (Section 5

Interpersonal communication as social action

We compare a number of influential approaches to human communication with the aim of understanding what it means for interpersonal communication to be a form of social action. In particular, we discuss the large-scale social normativity advocated by speech act theory, the view of communication as small-scale social interaction proper of Gricean approaches, and the intimate connection between communication and cooperation defended by Tomasello. We then argue in favor of a small-scale view of communication capable of accounting for the normative effects of communicative acts; to this purpose, we introduce the concept of interpersonal normativity and analyze its relationship with communicative intentions

Understanding planning practices: insights from a situated study on an Italian airport

This research projects examines planning as an instance of instructed action - that is, by focusing on how plans are designed and changed to anticipate actions, by competently using the instructions that regulate work. It does so by drawing on ethnomethodology and membership categorization analysis to understand the empirical materials collected over the course of ethnomethodologically informed ethnography in an airport center for the handling activities coordination. By focusing on plans, this research aims to foster understanding of cooperative dynamics in workplace settings. By approaching the study of plans as instructed actions, this research makes a new and original contribution to the understanding of plan use and planning as coordinative tool, and so unveils previously unnoticed aspects of plan use. In fact, it explains plans as artifacts that make it possible to maintain a consistent relationship between planning instructions and lived events, and to therefore link local and more transcendental aspects of work, such as the need to face patterns of organizational failure and maintain temporal coordination. This, in turn, has made it possible to challenge preconceptions in the study of plans. Indeed, by comparing the operators' practices for the competent setup and change of plans with literature on temporal coordination, it was possible to contradict current understanding of the role of plans in temporal coordination, which acknowledges that plans are difficult to use as temporal coordination devices. Moreover by comparing data analysis with the literature on organizations' capability to face the unexpected it was possible to challenge the received understanding of plans put forward by the mainstream theories on this topic, which recognize that plans and planning are not suitable for managing the unexpected or that they might even threaten the organizations' capability to face the unexpected. In addition, inspired by understanding anticipation as an embodied accomplishment forwarded by the concept of instructed actions, it was possible to engage with the understanding of the capability of plans to anticipate events as a distributed, artifact-mediated and dynamic accomplishment and, as a consequence, to challenge the received understanding of plans as artifacts whose capacity to anticipate future ways of performing activities is an immutable feature. Last but not least coupling the understanding of planning as an instance of instructed actions with the analysis of planners' interactions in light of the conceptual apparatus provided by membership categorization analysis has made it possible to go into the study of planners' interactions to explain re- planning as the effort to meet the outcomes of instructions with the local contingencies of work and to show how decisions about changes in the information content of the plans are made. In studying plans as instructed actions this study seeks to guide research on planning towards a more extensive understanding of plans as the outcome of the 'tendentious use of instructions'