Perceptual interactions in a minimalist virtual environment

How in real-life or through the use of technical devices can we recognize the presence of other persons and under what conditions can we differentiate them from objects? In order to approach this question, in the study reported here we explored the most basic conditions necessary for participants to recognize the presence of another person during a perceptual interaction. We created a mini-network of two minimalist devices and investigated whether participants were able to differentiate the perception of another person from the perception of a fixed and a mobile object even when the pattern of sensory stimulation was reduced to a bare minimum. We show that participants can recognize when the all-or-none tactile stimulation they experienced was attributable to an encounter with the other participant's avatar or the mobile object rather than with a fixed object. Participants were also able to establish different strategies in order to favor the situations of mutual perception. Thus, in the minimalist conditions of our experiment, the perception of another intentional subject was not based purely on any particular shape or objective trajectories of displacement; it was also based on properties that are intrinsic to the joint perceptual activity itself.     

Identification Problems in Personality Psychology

This paper discusses and illustrates identification problems in personality psychology. The measures used by psychologists to infer traits are based on behaviors, broadly defined. These behaviors are produced from multiple traits interacting with incentives in situations. In general, measures are determined by these multiple traits and do not identify any particular trait unless incentives and other traits are controlled for. Using two data sets, we show, that substantial portions of the variance in achievement test scores and grades, which are often used as measures of cognition, are explained by personality variables.     

Empathy as intersubjectivity: resolving Hume and Smith’s divide

Although empathy is arguably an important factor to consider in moral education, the concept itself has consistently stood on tenuous ground. In this essay, I claim that our adherence to ontological dualism and discrete subjectivity have problematized our comprehension of empathy. I propose that our understanding is limited by our understanding of selfhood. If the self were defined as intersubjective, along the lines of Merleau-Ponty, then empathy’s ambiguities would dissipate. After reconceptualizing empathy in light of intersubjectivity, I call for pedagogical relations that are aligned with developmental research, which provides further support for adhering to an alternative conception of the phenomenon.     

A Farewell to Countertransference

The "discovery" of countertransference provided a much-needed corrective to the one-sided view of transference and a patient's pathology. Even if its usefulness in the development of psychoanalysis was indisputable, its days are numbered. When I present my clinical work at conferences, I am often asked questions about my countertransference. These questions contain numerous assumptions that are challenged in this paper. Treatment is discussed from a self psychological perspective to highlight the therapeutic value of enabling the patient to engage a selfobject transference. The concept of "projective identification" is also challenged. Systems theory, in which the therapeutic relationship is understood as a co-construction between therapist and patient, is proposed as a more effective model to deal with the issues formerly included under transference-countertransference.     

Logic and Reasoning: do the facts matter?

Modern logic is undergoing a cognitive turn, side-stepping Frege’s ‘antipsychologism’. Collaborations between logicians and colleagues in more empirical fields are growing, especially in research on reasoning and information update by intelligent agents. We place this border-crossing research in the context of long-standing contacts between logic and empirical facts, since pure normativity has never been a plausible stance. We also discuss what the fall of Frege’s Wall means for a new agenda of logic as a theory of rational agency, and what might then be a viable understanding of ‘psychologism’ as a friend rather than an enemy of logical theory. Edited by Hannes Leitgeb     

Self and Other in Communication and Cognition: The Role of Auto-Communication and Intersubjectivity in Autopoiesis of Psychic Systems

By referring to Niklas Luhmann’s theory of self-referential systems, Aldo Mascareño (2008, submitted for publication) gives an account of system-environment interrelatedness, explaining how social and individual constitute each other through the process of communication and co-creation of meanings. Two possible extensions to his account are discussed. Firstly, auto-communication within the system that happens without any external reference needs to be taken into account while describing the existence and constant re-creation of psychic systems. Secondly, in order for the system and environment or two systems to communicate, an imagined and temporary intersubjectivity between the two needs to be assumed.     

An Ethics for the Psychoanalyst in the Postmodern Age

Abstract

Paul Roazen, How Freud worked. First-hand accounts of patients Northvale, NJ: Aronson, 1995.     

Spontaneous Moments and the Domain of Non-Verbal Communication

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of non-verbal interactions and spontaneous encounters on the therapeutic process and on a client's structural and behavioral patterns. The following case vignette concerns a client who presents with a pattern of non-verbal relational schemas based on his early traumatic experiences. The non-verbal and verbal role reenactments that unfold between client and therapist will be examined from an intersubjective, dialogical and self psychological perspective. Finally, the paper will explore how important therapeutic shifts may occur by attending to and working through these non-verbal aspects of the treatment, leading to new relational structures.     

Affective ontologies: Post-humanist perspectives on the self,feeling and intersubjectivity

At this particular historical juncture of the Anthropocene it is becoming increasingly clear that, as Val Plumwood puts it, the survival of our species depends upon how our relationships with earth others are reconfigured . Yet as the human is once again placed at the centre of our planetary life, this time as a geological agent, a growing body of scholarship has taken up the challenge of rethinking the human and its limits (see for example the special issue of the journal Angelaki 16(4), 2011). This special issue seeks to contribute to this body of work from the perspective of posthumanist explorations of affect, and thereby to open possibilities for articulating non-solipsistic and non-anthropocentric notions of the subject.     

The rainbow of emotions: at the crossroads of neurobiology and phenomenology

Continental Philosophy Review - This contribution seeks to explicitly articulate two directions of a continuous phenomenal field: (1) the genesis of intersubjectivity in its bodily basis (both...     

Social understanding through direct perception? Yes,by interacting

This paper comments on Gallagher’s recently published direct perception proposal about social cognition [Gallagher, S. (2008a). Direct perception in the intersubjective context. Consciousness and Cognition, 17(2), 535–543]. I show that direct perception is in danger of being appropriated by the very cognitivist accounts criticised by Gallagher (theory theory and simulation theory). Then I argue that the experiential directness of perception in social situations can be understood only in the context of the role of the interaction process in social cognition. I elaborate on the role of social interaction with a discussion of participatory sense-making to show that direct perception, rather than being a perception enriched by mainly individual capacities, can be best understood as an interactional phenomenon.     

Intersubjectivity as Co-phenomenology: From the Holism of Meaning to the Being-in-the-world-with-others

I outline in this paper a pragmatical approach to meaning. Meaning is defined as a phenomenologically experienced construal. As such, it is a dynamic object whose first evidence comes from the first person rather than the third one. At the same time, the approach assumes that meaning is not an individual creation, but rather an intersubjective one. Origins of meaning are also to be founded not ‘in the head’ of a cognitive system or subject, but in the intersubjective space contingently formed between a subject (S), an other (O) and a common object (R), which they talk about. Approaching this minimal communicative situation therefore requires realizing that the phenomenological dimension is always implied in any intersubjective encounter. The observed synchronized co-feeling among subjects, upon which language comprehension takes place, I call ‘co-phenomenology’. When analyzed in this way, intersubjectivity shows at the same time its social, phenomenological and biological dimensions.

Phenomenological Views on Intersubjectivity: Towards a Reinterpretation of Consciousness

Intersubjectivity and consciousness are reinterpreted according to the dynamic and relational coordinates of lived experience. Consciousness is not just another property of the subject, but rather the condition itself of his/her own being-in-the-world. The different aspects of consciousness are the moments and movements which constitute its intentional structure. These structures lead us to reinterpret material embodiment, temporality, and intersubjectivity as the “complex” steps taken by consciousness, which in its movements does not turn inward, on itself like a transcendental, reasoning, and self-centred consciousness, but, on the contrary, as an embodied consciousness immersed in others and in the world.

Empathy or Intersubjectivity? Understanding the Origins of Morality in Young Children’

This article is about young children’s morality and their concern for others’ wellbeing. Questions of what the value of others’ wellbeing can signify, how this value becomes visible to children and how it is expressed in their interaction will be posed. In this analysis, children’s commitment to others’ wellbeing is discussed in terms of two theories, namely the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1962, 1964) theory of intersubjectivity and the psychologist Martin Hoffman’s (1984, 1987, 2000) theory of empathy. The interaction between children and adults in pre-school, drawn from different studies of morality (Johansson, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003), constitutes the empirical basis. In the discussion, it is claimed that children’s care for others’ wellbeing can be understood in a fruitful way as experiences of, approaches to and ways of being involved in the other’s life-world rather than as expressions of empathy.

Neonatal imitation in chimpanzees (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pan troglodytes</Emphasis>) tested with two paradigms

Primate species differ in their imitative performance, perhaps reflecting differences in imitative capacity. The developmentally earliest form of imitation in humans, neonatal imitation, occurs in early interactions with social partners, and may be a more accurate index of innate capacity than imitation of actions on objects, which requires more cognitive ability. This study assessed imitative capacity in five neonatal chimpanzees, within a narrow age range (7–15 days of age), by testing responses to facial and vocal actions with two different test paradigms (structured and communicative). Imitation of mouth opening was found in both paradigms. In the communicative paradigm, significant agreement was found between infant actions and demonstrations. Additionally, chimpanzees matched the sequence of three actions of the TC model, but only on the second demonstration. Newborn chimpanzees matched more modeled actions in the communicative test than in the structured paradigm. These performances of chimpanzees, at birth, are in agreement with the literature, supporting a conclusion that imitative capacity is not unique to the human species. Developmental histories must be more fully considered in the cross-species study of imitation, as there is a greater degree of innate imitative capacity than previously known. Socialization practices interact with innate and developing competencies to determine the outcome of imitation tests later in life.