Embodied Mind and Cognition

Embodiment is typically given insufficient weight in debates concerning the moral status of Novel Synthetic Beings (NSBs) such as sentient or sapient Artificial Intelligences (AIs). Discussion usually turns on whether AIs are conscious or self-aware, but this does not exhaust what is morally relevant. Since moral agency encompasses what a being wants to do, the means by which it enacts choices in the world is a feature of such agency. In determining the moral status of NSBs and our obligations to them, therefore, we must consider how their corporeality shapes their options, preferences, values, and is constitutive of their moral universe. Analysing AI embodiment and the coupling between cognition and world, the paper shows why determination of moral status is only sensible in terms of the whole being, rather than mental sophistication alone, and why failure to do this leads to an impoverished account of our obligations to such NSBs.

Ich behaupte, dass die Tabelle der Intentionalität (Rationalität, Bewusstein, Geist, Denken, Sprache, Persönlichkeit usw.), die hier prominent dargestellt wird, mehr oder weniger genau beschreibt oder zumindest als Heuristik dient, wie wir denken und uns verhalten, und so umfasst sie nicht nur Philosophie und Psychologie, aber alles andere (Geschichte, Literatur, Mathematik, Politik etc.). Beachten Sie insbesondere, dass Intentionalität und Rationalität, wie ich (zusammen mit Searle, Wittgenstein und anderen) es sehen, sowohl bewusst deliberative linguistische System 2 als auch unbewusste automatisierte prälinguistische System 1 Aktionen oder Reflexe umfasst.

Ich mache einen kritischen Überblick über einige der wichtigsten Ergebnisse von zwei der bedeutendsten Studenten des Verhaltens der modernen Zeit, Ludwig Wittgenstein und John Searle, über die logische Struktur der Intentionalität (Geist, Sprache, Verhalten), als Ausgangspunkt wittgensteins grundlegende Entdeckung – dass alle wirklich "philosophischen" Probleme die gleichen sind – Verwirrungen darüber, wie Sprache in einem bestimmten Kontext zu verwenden, und so sind alle Lösungen gleich – blickend, wie Sprache in dem Kontext verwendet werden kann, um die Wahrheitsbedingungen (Bedingungen der Zufriedenheit oder COS) sind klar. Das Grundproblem ist, dass man alles sagen kann, aber man kann keine willkürliche Äußerung und Bedeutung bedeuten (geben, die man klar coS für) willenweise nur in einem ganz bestimmten Kontext möglich ist. Ich analysiere verschiedene Schriften von und über sie aus der modernen Perspektive der beiden Systeme des Denkens (popularisiert als "schnell denken, langsam denken"), mit einer neuen Tabelle der Intentionalität und neue duale Systeme Nomenklatur. Ich zeige, dass dies eine starke Heuristik für die Beschreibung von Verhalten ist.

Somit ist jedes Verhalten eng miteinander verbunden, wenn man den richtigen Standpunkt einnimmt. Die phänomenologische Illusion (Vergessen unseres automatisierten Systems 1) ist universell und erstreckt sich nicht nur über die gesamte Philosophie, sondern über das ganze Leben hinweg. Ich bin sicher, dass Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg und der Papst ungläubig wären, wenn man ihnen sagen würde, dass sie unter dem gleichen Problem wie Hegel, Husserl und Heidegger leiden (oder dass sie sich nur in gewissem Maße von Drogen- und accumbensSexsüchtigen unterscheiden, indem sie durch Stimulation ihrer Frontalkortik durch die Lieferung von Dopamin (und über 100 anderen Chemikalien) über das ventrale Tegmentum und den Kern motiviertwerden, aber es ist klar. Während die Phänomenologen nur viel Zeit verschwendeten, verschwenden sie die Erde und die Zukunft ihres Nachkommen.

A call for papers is open for the 1st Workshop with the title "Testing Embodied Cognition: The Embodied Mind in a Cognitive Universal Body"
5th September 2019 - “Taberna” – Alte Mensa – Georg-August-Universität Göttingen  -
Deadline for submission: 20th August 2019
Confirmed Keynote: Prof. G. Metta (iCub Project)/Alessandra Sciutti (iCub Project)

It is common to find depictions of behaviorist approaches to the mind as approaches according to which mental (or psychological) events are “dispositions for behavior.” Moreover, it is sometimes said that for these approaches the dispositions are for publicly observable (external) behaviors, or even “purely physical movements,” thereby excluding from being constitutive of mental events any internal (e.g., physiological) bodily happening, besides any movement not taken as “purely physical.” In this paper I aim to (i) pinpoint problems in such widespread depictions of behaviorism about the mind, by arguing that they turn out to be too restrictive or too broad, as the case may be. In addition, (ii) I put forward an alternative, more balanced characterization, which wards off such problems. Based upon this alternative characterization, I attempt to (iii) classify some of the embodied mind theories as behavioral, non-behavioral, or borderline cases between behavioral and non-behavioral perspectives.

Spontaneity and Rationality-a fresh look Or DIFFICULTY IN UNDERSTANDING the spontaneous nature of CHILDREN by reason based knowledge system. Once, I happened to watch two people swimming and noticed that one's actions were totally spontaneous whereas the other person seemed to think and act, kind of mechanical. Sure enough, when I enquired I found out that the first one was self-taught and the second person was taught by a coach. Self-taught is a way of expression that we have started using after we 'invented' teaching-both the word and the act. Actually ' self-taught' in this case really means that it is the water that taught the person to swim. The person began to respond to the water as a whole (mind and body together), each moment attentively learning from water what to do next. The mind is totally present with the body and here thought doesn't seem to have any role. Whereas the one taught by the coach had to break down the learning, giving priority to the mind because the coach first taught the mind with the help of language and then the student taught the body how to act. Seeing (sometimes even without seeing) and doing (learning) is different from instructing/ thinking/ understanding and then doing. In the first case, language does not come in as the primary source of knowledge whereas in the second case the teaching and instruction are happening in language. So here the mind learns first and then the body executes the action. In autonomous learning, the feedback is internal and experiential whereas in teaching the feedback is external and in language. With the mind and body thus fragmented and distanced, time entered our being. From timelessness, we got trapped in time. I remember reading an anthropologists description of how these two cultures cross a river. In the case of the rational cultures first thing is to study various factors like the direction of the wind, the strength of the flow, variations in this at particular time etc etc and after a thorough study the total plan is made. Start at so and so time in this direction and at another point change the direction etc and several mental rehearsals and then they set out to do the act. So the mind does the act first and the body obeys the mind. In case of spontaneous cultures learning happens while in the act. Of course, they are indeed familiar with the river. They have been living there and 'knowing' the river without any conscious learning. Two other situations worth exploring are one the football game and the traffic. In the case of football, the Brazilians are extremely spontaneous whereas the Germans and England etc are very rational in their moves. Even within Europe, one can see the difference between Spain, Italy-more spontaneous-on one side and North Europeans on the other. 'Rational' football looks like chess being played. When you watch

Cross-linguistic strategies for mapping lexical and spatial relations from body partonym systems to external object meronymies (as in English 'table leg', 'mountain face') have attracted substantial research and debate over the past three decades. Due to the systematic mappings, lexical productivity and geometric complexities of body-based meronymies found in many Mesoamerican languages, the region has become focal for these discussions, prominently including contrastive accounts of the phenomenon in Zapotec and Tzeltal, leading researchers to question whether such systems should be explained as global metaphorical mappings from bodily source to target holonym or as vector mappings of shape and axis generated " algorithmically ". I propose a synthesis of these accounts in this paper by drawing on the species-specific cognitive affordances of human upright posture grounded in the reorganization of the anatomical planes, with a special emphasis on antisymmetrical relations that emerge between arm-leg and face-groin antinomies cross-culturally. Whereas Levinson argues that the internal geometry of objects " stripped of their bodily associations " (1994: 821) is sufficient to account for Tzeltal meronymy, making metaphorical explanations entirely unnecessary, I propose a more powerful, elegant explanation of Tzeltal meronymic mapping that affirms both the geometric-analytic and the global-metaphorical nature of Tzeltal meaning construal. I do this by demonstrating that the " algorithm " in question arises from the phenomenology of movement and correlative body memories—an experiential ground which generates a culturally selected pair of inverse contrastive paradigm sets with marked and unmarked membership emerging antithetically relative to the transverse anatomical plane. These relations are then selected diagrammatically for the classification of object orientations according to systematic geometric iconicities. Results not only serve to clarify the case in question but also point to the relatively untapped potential that upright posture holds for theorizing the emergence of human cognition, highlighting in the process the nature, origins and theoretical validity of markedness and double scope conceptual integration.

The present monograph has discussed the theoretical development of Cognitive Linguistics in general and the theory of Conceptual Metaphors and Metonymy in particular. The development of this theory has raised complex methodological issues for research in metaphors in general and identification and analysis of conceptual metaphors and conceptual metonymies in particular. This monograph has briefly presented an overview of different methodological approach and also outlined the growing significance of corpus-based research in identification and analysis of metaphors. The monograph has also discussed various terms and concepts popularly used in Cognitive Linguistics. It has presented the analysis of Hindi linguistic metaphors of selected body part terms and for the analysis of linguistic metaphors the Theory of Conceptual Metaphors and Metonymies is extensively utilized.

Mehr als 2000 Jahre hat sich die Philosophie mit dem Schreckgespenst des Skeptizismus herumgeschlagen. In diesem Aufsatz werden wir unsere Ansicht begründen, daß ein modifizierter wissenschaftlicher Skeptizismus gestützt werden kann durch einen neuen wahrnehmungs-theoretischen Ansatz, der von Kybernetikern im Bereich der Kontrollt-heorie entwickelt worden ist. Das kybernetische Modell, das sich als gut vereinbar mit dem Entwicklungsmodell der Kognition in der Piaget-Schule erweist, verbindet das Element kognitiver Konstruktion mit dem traditionellen Zweifel des Skeptikers an der Verläßlichkeit unserer Sinne.

PLAYING AS A MEANS TO AWAKEN THE INNER WORLD
We are formed by what we do. The child is being awakened, developed and formed by what it does. In that sense the initial period of the child’s life is spend in forming itself by means of the outer context/ world. As children explore the outside world, their inner word – qualities and abilities-gets awakened and developed
Awakening of learning qualities and skills
Autonomy, observation, attention, intelligence, dexterity, patience, resilience, courage, care- both to take care of oneself and others, cooperation, taste,  beauty, playfulness, trust, leadership, responsibility. The focus is on developing self-discipline, self-initiative, and self-responsibility.
INNER CONDITIONS
  Natural feelings – love, trust, beauty are the guides of this journey called life.
INNER TOOLS
  Senses are a two way door that helps us to know out side and also the inner world.
INNER SKILLS & QUALITIES
Autonomy, trust, observation, attention, patience, perseverance, resilience, humility, innocence,
COMPREHENSION
self organization by inherent reasoning.
KNOWING
Instinct, intuition, insight, intelligence and perception seems to be the basic antennae's of knowledge.
The only thing we owe our children is to keep alive their authenticity and originality so that they grow in autonomy.

In this paper, the role of the environment and physical embodiment of computational systems for explanatory purposes will be analyzed. In particular, the focus will be on cognitive computational systems, understood in terms of mechanisms that manipulate semantic information. It will be argued that the role of the environment has long been appreciated, in particular in the work of Herbert A. Simon, which has inspired the mechanistic view on explanation. From Simon's perspective, the embodied view on cognition seems natural but it is nowhere near as critical as its proponents suggest. The only point of difference between Simon and embodied cognition is the significance of body-based off-line cognition; however, it will be argued that it is notoriously over-appreciated in the current debate. The new mechanistic view on explanation suggests that even if it is critical to situate a mechanism in its environment and study its physical composition, or realization, it is also stressed that not all detail counts, and that some bodily features of cognitive systems should be left out from explanations.

The awareness of death is a central motivating force behind human activity. Their capacities for abstract and symbolic reasoning give human beings a unique foresight of their finite lifetime and forthcoming demise. Because of the overwhelming nature of this realization, we try to cope with the ensuing anxieties by means of various cognitive and existential strategies. One such strategy is to create a meaningful legacy during one's lifetime that will outlive the single individual. Whole-brain emulation (WBE) is another approach, but is unusual because of its literal promise to abolish death. Starting from the premise that WBE is feasible and will advance to such a level that we can speak of uploaded minds, we explore the implications of an allegedly immortal existence in a computational substrate: for our embodiment in the first place, and for death anxiety in the second. We argue that uploading would change the nature of, but could ultimately never abolish, embodiment. Instead, the defining characteristic of all brains are their vital links to the bodies that contain them and their interactions with the environment that are mediated by the body. In this light, we discuss the limits of WBE's potential to mitigate death anxieties: limits related to the (objective) probability of ceasing to exist, but also those that stem from the perception of the body as a proxy for death.

As so often in philosophy, the title not only lays down the battle line but exposes the author’s biases and mistakes, since whether or not we can make sense of the language game ‘Seeing things as they are’ and whether it’s possible to have a ‘philosophical’ ‘theory of perception’ (which can only be about how the language of perception works), as opposed to a scientific one, which is a theory about how the brain works, are exactly the issues. This is classic Searle—superb and probably at least as good as anyone else can produce, but lacking a full understanding of the fundamental insights of the later Wittgenstein and with no grasp of the two systems of thought framework, which
could have made it brilliant. As in his previous work, Searle largely avoids scientism but there are frequent lapses and he does not grasp that the issues are always about language games, a failing he shares with nearly everyone. After providing a framework consisting of a Table of Intentionality based on the two systems of thought and thinking and decision research, I give a detailed analysis of the book.

Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016).  For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book  Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization  - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016  662p (2016).

All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. 

Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017)    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. 

  The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017)  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B.

Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017)    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX 

Suicide by Democracy: an Obituary for America and the World (2018) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQVWV9C

This study explores multimodal metaphors and metonymies in Faust, a German Expressionist silent fiction movie by Murnau (1926). The paper combines principles of psychocinematics (Shimamura, 2013b), an interdisciplinary scientific field of enquiry, with the multimodal metaphor and expressive movement model (e.g. Kappelhoff & Müller, 2011), which looks into the temporal dynamics of metaphoric meaning making by movie watchers. It is shown that interrelating both film-analytic approaches provides a deeper and more comprehensive insight into how figurative thought influences psycho-cognitive processes in the moviegoer’s mind as they dynamically unfold in their cinematic contexts. Evidence is provided that Kappelhoff and co-workers’ proposal can be complemented and enriched by psychocinematics findings on the allocation of visual attention and eye fixation, motion and image frame sensing, and mental activity underlying emotional and diagetic experiences.

The ‘extended mind’ thesis asserts that cognitive processes are not bound by the skull or even skin of biological individuals, but actively incorporate environmental structures such as symbols, tools, artifacts, media, cultural practices, norms, groups, or institutions. By distributing cognition across space, time, and people in canny ways, we circumvent or overcome the biological limitations of our brains. Human beings are creative, albeit opportunistic experts in cognitive ‘self-transcendence.’ This entry surveys discussions of EM in philosophy of mind and cognitive science which point to this overarching theme.

RESUMEN:
Me ocuparé del tipo de conocimiento que pueden comportar las obras de ficción, si es que –claro está– comportan alguno; sobre el modo en el cual se construyen subjetividad y texto, así como las relaciones entre mundo y lenguaje. Se pretende así dar sucinta cuenta de las diversas retóricas de la posmodernidad, particularmente a través del análisis del Hipertexto y la semántica de mundos posibles, esto es, de las lógicas paraconsistentes asociadas a la ficcionalidad. Aquí vendrá a cuenta la afirmación del carácter ficcional de la realidad, aspecto central de esta tesis, la que según se espera, debiera contribuir a una mejor comprensión de los procesos de hibridación por los que atraviesan las diferentes áreas del saber o ecosistemas discursivos, posibilitando con ello la discusión interdisciplinaria, la transferencia de información y el ejercicio de la ciencia como empresa social, donde los investigadores y el lector crítico se podrán reconocer como pertenecientes a una comunidad de retóricas y de problemas. Mostraré cómo la expansión de las categorías estéticas proporciona el único paradigma posible en las nuevas condiciones de nuestro trato con la realidad. Mi opinión es que nuestra concepción –postmoderna– de la realidad, nuestra " filosofía primera " se ha vuelto, en un sentido elemental, estética. Es precisamente este el sentido de la expresión El giro estético de la Filosofía. Este nuevo paradigma postmoderno, el de la presencia del arte que se manifiesta como clave hermenéutica de la cultura y de la sensibilidad presente, ha significado la consiguiente revitalización que para la filosofía significa el salir del estrecho ámbito en que permanecía recluida por el paradigma cientificista aceptado y canonizado por la tradición moderna. La razón poética –o la " lógica " del discurso estético– como se ha señalado, es una razón volcada hacia la revelación interpretativa de su objeto. En la razón poética aparece, lo que podemos denominar, una conciencia hermenéutica. Es esta una razón volcada hacia la capacidad interpretativa de la razón, bajo su propio hacer interpretativo.
Dr. Adolfo Vásquez Rocca.
1.- Este Artículo es el desarrollo –en una segunda entrega– de las tesis expuestas en "Mundos Posibles y Ficciones Narrativas" , publicado en A Parte Rei, Nº 37, 2005, Madrid

Abstract The term embodiment identifies a theory that meaning and semantics cannot be captured by abstract, logical systems, but are dependent on an agent's experience derived from being situated in an environment. This theory has recently received a great deal of support in the cognitive science literature and is having significant impact in artificial intelligence. Memetics refers to the theory that knowledge and ideas can evolve more or less independently of their human-agent substrates.

(Abstract pertains to the whole project, not merely this introductory section)

Uncovering the legacy of Gregory Bateson:

(a) Re-contextualizing the double bind theory of "schizophrenia"

(b) The dual nature of the new recursive cybernetic epistemology:

(i) [Local Epistemology] ('e'pistemology)
      - personal and cultural
    (Ontology now subsumed within 'e'pistemological "Patterns of Search")

(ii) [Meta Epistemology] ('E'pistemology)
      - abstract tautological fundamentals and formal regularities
    (as with all scientific theories --without exception-- not a priori, but created by a  human subject)

(iii) Recursiveness of Epistemology:
      ......Local Epistemology.......Meta Epistemology.......Local Epistemology.......Meta Epistemology........and so on ad infinitum

(iii) The double bind as the very kernel of the new recursive epistemology.
      -Taken together, in their entirety, we have the outlines of a solution to the mind-body problem. Or to put this another way, through an overt utilization of the method of "double description" (arising through the evolutionary advantage afforded to us in binocular vision) we perceive difference by comparing materialistic monism with idealistic monism. This going above, or beyond, is meta to the binary positions and, with the assistance of cybernetics, leads to an integral postdualistic monism.

Rutgers Philosopher Peter Kivy maintains that there is only one foundational kind of meaning: the meaning that we convey in the shared kind of intellect-mediated symbolism that we call 'language'. But, it is precisely by lacking this reductively intellectual version of a truth-function that human's musical perception and production is a power that explicitly—yes, explicitly—admits of human, terrestrial, ecological, physical, and cosmic mystery. This a mystery in the sense to which we animal creatures (plant/animal/mineral), and especially we humans, are at once subordinate to, and participant in, a power, and a knowledge-source, which is infinitely greater than that of whatever amount and depth of knowledge and power that we humans may, at a given point, attain.

Kivy argues against musical meaning on grounds that propositional meaning is the province of shared language. I argue that the logical possibility of linguistic meaning, and thus of language as a personal and social good, is afforded by intellectual and motivational empathy, both for self and others. Language, in its merely quasi-philosophic denotative function of ‘meaning’, is not empathic, nor particularly affective---which is why the vast bulk of most instances of most spoken languages can effectively, if not so conveniently, be conducted purely in monotone, or the ‘robot voice’ of Computer in the original Star Trek TV series. But, it is for reasons of the greater efficiency in communication afforded that we put elements of human sonic affect in our speech production and perception. This is because we are not intellects to which biological senses are merely tacked. On the contrary, any intellect that can possibly know anything must be an intellect that is itself based on natural, intuitive, emotional, even visceral, 'subjective' knowledge. If an intellect was purely void of such natural knowledge, that intellect would be an  indifferent Blank Slate incapable of any sense of genuine value; It would be an intellect in name only, with no functions, because it would be incapable of evaluating real things. Human sonic affect, or musical perception of sounds, is a real thing. And given humans' capacity and drive for artifactive production, humans refine their bio-sonic-affective artifacts into its own realm of activity-perception, especially in the form of human artefactual musics, or 'music'.

So, on logical and etymological grounds, I show that shared language is the province of the meanings we persons have in any case, not in shared language itself as a special entity or action.

Kivy, in contrast to this, argues as if text is the standard of language, and as if culturally persistent speech acts, such as plays, are more foundationally linguistic than is basic, live, personally originative linguistic interaction. This reversal of the natural priority of meaning fails to treat language as the denotative, and socially mediated, act that it is. The instances of speech in a conversation are mediative forms for what those persons’ have in mind: their meanings. This is the origin of the very term 'meaning': 'That which oneself, or another, has in mind'. So the reversal here leads to reasoning as if the meaning in a given instance of language more foundationally inheres in a given instance of language, apart from its author, than in its author!

So I argue that our meanings originate in, and never actually exist outside of, our persons and how we relate to our physical external world and to each other as persons. The idea that the mere empirical forms of language are what possess meaning is, at best, a projection of our own internal meanings. Therefore, our reference merely to language’s ‘possession’ of meaning is, at best, a linguistic and neuro-cognitive convenience and manner of expression, or is the use of the term ‘language’ to denote a type of 'extended' cognition.

I demonstrate that a preference for the empirical forms of language as denoting meaning, over a holistic sensitivity to our inter-subjectivity, not only falsely renders music meaningless, but undercuts the effectiveness of language itself both as an innate tool of personal valuation and reasoning and as a social means of realizing, creating, and developing meaning.

One is expected to act on the decision s/he has made. In this sense, a decision-maker is cognizant of the fact that the real meaningfulness of her/his decision lies on its actual operationalization. A decision not acted upon is a failed endeavor which in effect makes the process of decision-making itself an exercise in futility. As a matter  of realistic experience, within the ambit that constitutes decision-making and operationalization is a crucial interspace that magnifies the role of emotion which at the outset is not even apparent but tended to be choked off by the predominance of cerebral rationality and the desired analytic process. The push–or the will–to act on a decision made is not singularly one of rationality but more a case of emotion. Within the whole gamut of decision-making and decision-operationalization is an interplay of rationality and emotion. This is reflective of the human dynamics where reason and passion are fundamentally inseparable.

Ecological psychology suggests the environment is experienced by perceivers in terms of their ability to behave within it—or their affordances. The authors used the remembered-affordance paradigm to evaluate this claim in contrast to an additive model that combined lower-order, action-neutral, perceived properties of the perceiver and environment to compute an affordance. In 2 experiments, participants reported the boundary between actions that were or were not possible (overhead reaching in Experiments 1a and 1b, and minimum aperture pass-through-ability in Experiment 2) while using or not using an implement (a stick). They also reported the length of the implement independent of its use in any action. Reports of stick length were consistently different from action-relevant affordance reports, and the additive model was incapable of accounting for participants’ affordance reports. The results are consistent with ecological psychology’s claim that affordances are perceived directly and also with embodied and functional approaches to memory, which suggest that the environment is experienced in task-specific and action-relevant terms.

This paper argues that there is a conflict between two theses held by John McDowell, namely i) the claim that we are under a standing obligation to revise our beliefs if reflection demands it; and ii) the view that veridical experience is a mode of direct access to the world. Since (i) puts no bounds on what would constitute reasonable doubt, it invites skeptical concerns which overthrow (ii). Conversely, since (ii) says that there are some experiences which we are entitled to trust, it undermines the prescriptive scope of (i). Drawing on C. S. Peirce’s distinction between genuine and contrived doubt, I maintain that critical revisions of beliefs should be triggered only by unwanted disruptions of habits, thereby restoring unity between McDowell’s two theses.

In this work we will develop the thesis that the concept of dynamical frustration (Binder, 2008), involving the tension between conflicting tendencies in a physical system, is essential when analyzing the cognitive-computational bases of language. We will argue that there are two kinds of frustrations interplaying, in principle as independent theses: an architectural global frustration relating phrase structural and Markovian processes in general computations; and a local derivational frustration relating semantic and phonological cycles within language processing. After developing and analyzing each frustration, with particular focus on human language, we will briefly explore the consequences these frustrations have on the “design” of mental faculties, and the impact our theory has on the Minimalist notion of “perfection in language design”.

Quadrato Motor Training (QMT) is a specifically-structured walking meditation, aimed at improving reflectivity and lowering habitual thought and movement. Here we set out to examine the possible effect of QMT on reflectivity, employing the Hidden Figures Test (HFT), which assesses both spatial performance (measured by correct answers) as well as reflectivity (interpolated from correct answers and reaction time). In the first study (n = 24, only females), we showed that QMT significantly improves HFT performance, compared to two groups, controlling for cognitive or motor aspects of the QMT: Verbal Training (identical cognitive training with verbal response) and Simple Motor Training (similar motor training with reduced choice requirements). These results show that QMT improves HFT performance above the pre-post expected learning. In the second study, building on previous literature showing gender-dependent effects on cognitive performance, we conducted a preliminary pilot examining gender-dependent effect of training on reflectivity and its electrophysiological counterparts. EEG analyses focused on theta, alpha and gamma coherence. HFT performance and resting-state EEG were measured in 37 participants (20 males), using a within-subject pre-post design. Following training, HFT performance improved in both genders. However, we found a gender-dependent difference in functional connectivity: while theta and alpha intra-hemispheric coherence was enhanced in females, the opposite pattern was found in males. These results are discussed in relation to neuronal efficiency theory. Together, the results demonstrate that QMT improves spatial performance, and may involve a gender-dependent electrophysiological effect. This study emphasizes both the importance of studying gender-related training effects within the contemplative neuroscience endeavor, as well as the need to widen its scope toward including “contemplation in action.”

Preface-Epilogue

'...knowledge is not classificatory. It is rather storied.'
(Ingold, 2011, 159)

The semi-fictional story of Mr. Messy and the Ghost in the Machine (which you may eventually come to, although it may be read without reading this preface-epilogue) traces the journey of a working-class child who slowly transforms into a transclassed young adult to become a lecturer in higher education. During his time teaching and studying/researching at university he is transformed yet again into a middle-class academic (by Mr. Neat and Mr. Tidy who want nothing more than to 'straighten him out'!). Eventually, however, this enclassing has the reverse effect on him as he has a moment of existential clarity and becomes a working-class 'haecceity' [2] in academe, finally accepting/realising that he/she [3] has no 'fixed' form as an organismic 'subject' (although a story never finishes at 'the end').
This preface-epilogue is messy. It introduces-concludes the story of Mr. Messy and the Ghost in the Machine by taking a nonlinear route across a wide plane, assembling themes of children's literature, gender (in)equality, environmental (in)justice, psychiatry/psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, schizoanalysis, happiness, academic elitism, suicide, flat caps, myceliums, extended minds and entangles them together within the assemblage of social class and inequity; because they cannot be separated.
You, the reader/performer, will have to do some work. You are not merely a passive observer or audience member. By your very actions (or 'intra-actions' [4]), of reading this you are implicated and imbricated in the story. You are changing it as we speak; because you cannot be separated from it.

This is not symbolic. It means nothing. It is always a becoming...