Search results

This paper aims to make the case for continued opportunity for high levels of human well-being under descent conditions characterised by declining economic throughput and socio-political complexity.

Relationships between assumptions about human well-being formed within a modern industrial context, the guiding narratives attending these, and the broader cultural influence of ideas from the evolutionary sciences are examined. Alternative ways of making sense of these relationships are explored. The experiences of societies guided by cultural narratives based on different premises to those most influential in industrial societies are reviewed for their implications for human well-being under descent conditions.

Human experiences of well-being are principally a function of the sources of meaning and associated narratives by which members of a culture make sense of their situation, as these determine the nature of the material and energetic conditions required to live well. Under descent conditions, the narrative of progress that has supported viable societies during the 300-year period of industrial expansion is unlikely to continue serving humanity well. Collective participation in the renewal of guiding cultural narratives is a primary target for efforts to provide continued opportunities for high quality of life to all members of humanity.

The findings point towards specific characteristics of cultural sense-making narratives that may support viable human societies under descent conditions.

By moving beyond the default assumption that descent automatically implies decline in human well-being, a barrier may be lowered to more open and mature society-wide engagement in conversations about the present human predicament and effective ways of responding to it.

New connections are identified between perspectives based on biological evolutionary theory and the continued influence of the idea of progress in establishing default assumptions about prospects for human well-being under descent conditions. Experiences of non-industrial societies are taken as the basis for identifying opportunities for human well-being under far more modest material and energetic conditions than those available to the portion of humanity that presently enjoys benefits of industrial development that outweigh the attendant costs.

In this paper, the authors explore the specific nature of material-based legitimation and examine how it differs from other forms of legitimation. Prior studies of institutional legitimacy have predominantly focused on the discursive and iconic aspects of legitimation, with much less focus placed on the role of materiality. To advance our argument, the authors introduce the notion of enactive legitimation. The authors suggest that legitimation is derived from and supported by the ongoing engagement and interaction with materials and material-based practices. To elaborate our argument, the authors study a case of the use of material signification to legitimize a new financial product within Islamic banking. The authors show that the legitimacy of the product is grounded in materials and the materiality of a number of ritualized practices. Materials and practices, however, also impose their own specific constraints on the process, and do so in ways that are more evident than when legitimation is based on signs and symbols (both language and images). The paper contributes to practice-based institutionalism by leveraging one of the central tenets of practice theory to extend the understanding of legitimation. It also illustrates what practice-based sensitivity may look like in action.

To present an account of cognition integrating second‐order cybernetics (SOC) together with enactive perception and dynamic systems theory.

The paper presents a brief critique of classical models of cognition then outlines how integration of SOC, enactive perception and dynamic systems theory can overcome some weaknesses of the classical paradigm.

Presents the critique of evolutionary robotics showing how the issues of teleology and autonomy are left unresolved by this paradigm although their solution fits within the proposed framework.

The paper highlights the importance of genuine autonomy in the development of artificial cognitive systems. It sets out a framework within which the robotic research of cognitive systems could succeed.

There are no immediate practical implications but see research implications.

It joins the discussion on the fundamental nature of cognitive systems and emphasise the importance of autonomy and embodiment.

Modern organic metaphors for society have run parallel to the very idea of sociology as a science, starting with Comte and Spencer's use of the term “social organism” (Comte, 1830–42; Spencer, 1897). These metaphors provide a self-renewing source of debate, analogies, and disanalogies. Processes of social regulation, conservation, growth, and reproduction provoke an irresistible epistemic resonance and make us lose little time in offering explanations resembling those of biological regulation, conservation, growth, and reproduction. The phenomenon has not been restricted to metaphor-hungry social scientists: the final chapter of W. B. Cannon's The wisdom of the body (1932) is called “Relations of biological and social homeostasis.” Attempts to apply a modern theory of living organisms — the theory of autopoiesis (Maturana & Varela, 1980) — to social systems are but the latest installment in this saga. Despite the appeal of the organic metaphor, there are good reasons to remain skeptical of these parallels. “Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede,” says G. K. Chesterton (1910) ironically in his essay against the medical fallacy. Doctors may disagree on the diagnosis of an illness, he says, but they know what is the state they are trying to restore: that of a healthy organism (implying, admittedly, a rather unproblematic concept of health). In social systems, a “social illness” confronts us with precisely the opposite situation: the disagreement is about what the healthy state should be.

This paper conceives of Hayek's overall project as presenting a theory of sociocognition, explication of which has a two-fold purpose: (1) to locate Hayek within the non-Cartesian tradition of cognitive science, and (2) to show how Hayek's philosophical psychology infuses his social theory.

Drawing on the phenomenological concepts of “empathy” and “communal emotions” developed by Edith Stein (1917, 1922), the purpose of this paper is to discuss the co-existence both of the legitimacy and accountability perspectives in voluntarily delivered social and environmental reporting (SER), based on different “levels of empathy” towards different stakeholders.

The paper adopts an interpretive research design, drawn from Stein’s concept of empathy by using a mixed-method approach. A manual content analysis was performed on 393 cooperative banks’ (CB) social and environmental reports from 2005 to 2013 in Italy, and 14 semi-structured interviews.

The results show that CBs voluntarily disclose information in different ways to different stakeholders. According to Stein, the phenomenological concept of empathy, and its understanding within institutions, allows us to interpret these multiple perspectives within a single social and environmental report. Therefore, when the process of acquiring knowledge in the CB–stakeholder relationship is complete and mentalised (level 3, re-enactive empathy), the SER holds high informative power, consistent with the accountability perspective; on the contrary, when this process is peripheral and perceptional (level 1, basic empathy), the SER tends to provide more self-assessment information, attempting to portray the bank in a positive light, which is consistent with the legitimacy perspective.

The concept of empathy introduced in this paper can assist in interpreting the interactions between an organisation and different stakeholders within the same social and environmental report. Moreover, the approach adopted in this paper considers different stakeholders simultaneously, thus responding to previous concerns regarding the lack of focus on multiple stakeholders.

The paper aims to consider competing accounts of perception and to examine their potential to support design activity that seeks to extend and enrich perception using interface technologies. The interfaces will enable the direct perception of electromagnetic phenomena that are not now considered to be directly available to humans.

Two models are considered. According to one, the standard view, perception is of an external world known by means of information flowing into an organism from it as conditioned by the organism's biological sensory modalities; according to the other, the enactive view, perception occurs by means of learning to differentiate oneself from the world by undertaking activities, by learning and mastering sensorimotor contingencies.

The paper presents preliminary results of design work based on enactive cognition and argues that the results, in turn, re‐inform and reinforce the theory by the introduction of novel perceptual phenomena that cannot be accommodated within the standard view of perception.

The project, rather than seeking an instrumental utility, though this may occur, instead strives to enable the bringing forth of a richer world. Its objective is epistemic rather than pragmatic.

The paper presents a reflection on the role of design in the construction of theory.

Perspective-taking is a social competency to consider the world from other viewpoints (Galinsky, Maddux, Gilin, & White, 2008); it “allows an individual to anticipate the behavior and reactions of others” (Davis, 1983, p. 115) and helps to balance attention between self- and other-interests (Galinsky et al., 2008). Though often used interchangeably with the term empathy – “an other-focused emotional response that allows one person to affectively connect with another” (Galinsky et al., 2008, p. 378), clear evidence exists that demonstrates that the two concepts are distinct (Coke, Batson, & McDavis, 1978; Davis, 1983; Deutch & Madle, 1975; Hoffman, 1977; Oswald, 1996). Although both concepts refer to a social competency of taking another's perspective, empathy tends to be more affective while perspective taking leans toward the cognitive (Galinsky et al., 2008). For example, perspective taking is associated with personality characteristics such as high self-esteem and low neuroticism as opposed to emotionality (Davis, 1983). Perspective-takers are more capable of stepping outside the constraints of their own immediate, biased frames of reference (Moore, 2005) to reduce egocentric perceptions of fairness in competitive contexts (without it being at the expense of their own self-interest; Epley, Caruso, & Bazerman, 2006). Perspective taking has also been shown to be a more valuable strategy than empathy in strategic interactions because it helps negotiators find the necessary balance between competition and cooperation, between self- and other-interest (Galinsky et al., 2008). Achieving such a balance facilitates creative problem-solving (Pruitt & Rubin, 1986). For instance, in negotiation, a focus only on self-interests is associated with excessive aggression and obstinacy whereas a focus only on other-interests encourages excessive concession making to the detriment of one's own outcomes (Galinsky et al., 2008). In contrast, perspective takers have the capacity to uncover underlying interests to generate creative solutions when an obvious deal is not possible (Galinsky et al., 2008). Consequently, the cognitive appreciation of another person's interests is capable of facilitating economically efficient outcomes by acting as a discovery heuristic that reveals hidden problems or solutions and as a tool that enables individuals to capture more value for themselves (Galinsky et al., 2008).

Introduces an adopter‐centered, process‐oriented model with which to explore behavioral processes related to technology adoption. This approach enables us to learn about adoption as a process and to explore the subprocesses that affect perceptions and attitudes. This perspective provides the opportunity for a much richer understanding of how adoption occurs and how it can be influenced. Sensemaking focuses on the adopter herself, i.e. her mental frameworks, and the antecedents and products of those frameworks. The sensemaking model describes the evolution of the adopter’s mental framework. Rogers’ innovation‐decision process model charts a progression of activities during the adoption process, whereas the sensemaking model explains the adopter’s mental mechanics at each stage.