Mind Ecologies
Mind Ecologies

Author: Matthew Crippen

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 023154880X

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Pragmatism—a pluralistic philosophy with kinships to phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and embodied cognitive science—is resurging across disciplines. It has growing relevance to literary studies, the arts, and religious scholarship, along with branches of political theory, not to mention our understanding of science. But philosophies and sciences of mind have lagged behind this pragmatic turn, for the most part retaining a central-nervous-system orientation, which pragmatists reject as too narrow. Matthew Crippen, a philosopher of mind, and Jay Schulkin, a behavioral neuroscientist, offer an innovative interdisciplinary theory of mind. They argue that pragmatism in combination with phenomenology is not only able to give an unusually persuasive rendering of how we think, feel, experience, and act in the world but also provides the account most consistent with current evidence from cognitive science and neurobiology. Crippen and Schulkin contend that cognition, emotion, and perception are incomplete without action, and in action they fuse together. Not only are we embodied subjects whose thoughts, emotions, and capacities comprise one integrated system; we are living ecologies inseparable from our surroundings, our cultures, and our world. Ranging from social coordination to the role of gut bacteria and visceral organs in mental activity, and touching upon fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and plant cognition, Crippen and Schulkin stress the role of aesthetics, emotions, interests, and moods in the ongoing enactment of experience. Synthesizing philosophy, neurobiology, psychology, and the history of science, Mind Ecologies offers a broad and deep exploration of evidence for the embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended nature of mind.

Steps to an Ecology of Mind
Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Author: Gregory Bateson

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 572

ISBN-13: 9780226039053

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Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. This classic anthology of his major work includes a new Foreword by his daughter, Mary Katherine Bateson. 5 line drawings.

Automated Ecologies: Towards an Adaptive Ecology of Mind, Material and Intelligent Machines in Architecture?
Automated Ecologies: Towards an Adaptive Ecology of Mind, Material and Intelligent Machines in Architecture?

Author: Augustine Ong Wing

Publisher: Augustine Ong Wing

Published: 2014-06-21

Total Pages: 48

ISBN-13:

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Popular notions of sustainability in architecture and urbanism idealizes nature as primary over the mediated complexity that is inevitable in a modern city's functioning. More specifically, contemporary ecological debates and models have failed to sufficiently account for the convergence of computers, automation and machine intelligence with the physical and social environments that is gradually emerging in the post-digital condition. The following publication takes an ecological view to interpret critically the micro-ecology of Amazon's automated warehouses which rely on adaptive machine intelligence which is further examined critically within the framework of cybernetic systems. Paradoxically, it also happens to thrive within the logic of the dominant global mode of consumption and production which is capitalism. Most importantly, this relational ecology lies at the intersection of the mediated complexity where the digital and physical worlds meet.

Intellectual Journeys in Ecological Psychology
Intellectual Journeys in Ecological Psychology

Author: Agnes Szokolszky

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-27

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 1000825612

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Intellectual Journeys in Ecological Psychology: Interviews and Reflections from Pioneers in the Field presents 12 in-depth interviews with prominent scientists associated with Ecological Psychology, rooted in James Gibson’s radical approach to perception. Featuring a mix of interviews conducted around the turn of the millennium with leading figures of Ecological Psychology, the book reveals discussions not previously found in publications and authentic personal perspectives about the early days of Ecological Psychology, a significant paradigm of post-cognitivist psychology. The interviews are supplemented by current reflections that bridge the past to the present. Each interview chapter also contains a brief biography of the interviewee and a list of their top ten most significant publications. An introductory chapter by Harry Heft provides an overview of Gibson’s theory and the post-Gibsonian theoretical landscape. A further chapter by the editors highlights lineages and patterns in the scientific careers and work of the interviewees. An epilogue by William Warren concludes the volume, addressing the current state and directions of Ecological Psychology. In the Appendix photographs taken by Sverker Runeson in the 1960s and 1970s show scenes and actors from scientific event in Ecological Psychology. This book will be beneficial to all researchers and students in the international community of Ecological Psychology. It will also serve as a starting point for those who wish to learn more about the movement and origins of Ecological Psychology.

Cognitive Ecologies and the History of Remembering
Cognitive Ecologies and the History of Remembering

Author: E. Tribble

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-04-05

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 0230299490

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This book unites research in philosophy and cognitive science with cultural history to re-examine memory in early modern religious practices. Offering an ecological approach to memory and culture, it argues that models derived from Extended Mind and Distributed Cognition can bridge the gap between individual and social models of memory.

From Ecology to Brain Development: Bridging Separate Evolutionary Paradigms
From Ecology to Brain Development: Bridging Separate Evolutionary Paradigms

Author: Francisco Aboitiz

Publisher: Frontiers Media SA

Published: 2018-09-14

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 2889455572

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The nervous system is the product of biological evolution and is shaped by the interplay between extrinsic factors determining the ecology of animals, and by intrinsic processes that dictate the developmental rules that give rise to adult functional structures. This special topic is oriented to develop an integrative view from behavior and ecology to neurodevelopmental processes. We address questions such as how do sensory systems evolve according to ecological conditions? How do neural networks organize to generate adaptive behavior? How does cognition and brain connectivity evolve? What are the developmental mechanisms that give rise to functional adaptation? Accordingly, the book is divided in three sections, (i) Evolution of sensorimotor systems; (ii) Cognitive computations and neural circuits, and (iii) Development and brain evolution. We hope that this initiative will support an interdisciplinary program that addresses the nervous system as a unified organ, subject to both functional and developmental constraints, where the final outcome results of a compromise between different parameters rather than being the result of several single variables acting independently of each other.

Ecologies for Learning and Practice
Ecologies for Learning and Practice

Author: Ronald Barnett

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-11-06

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1351020242

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Ecologies for Learning and Practice provides the first systematic account of the ideas of learning ecologies and ecologies of practice and locates the two concepts within the context of our contemporary world. It focuses on how individuals and society are being presented with all manner of learning challenges arising from fluidities and disruptions, which extend across all domains of life. This book examines emerging ways of understanding and living purposively in these new fluidities and provides fresh perspectives on the way we learn and achieve in such dynamic contexts. Providing an insight into the research of a range of internationally renowned contributors, this book explores diverse topics from the higher education and adult learning worlds. These include: The challenges faced by education systems today The concept of ecologies for learning and practice The role and responsibility of higher education institutions in advancing ecological approaches to learning The different eco-social systems of the world—local and global, economic, cultural, practical, technological, and ethical How adult learners might create and manage their own ecologies for learning and practice in order to sustain themselves and flourish With its proposals for individual and institutional learning in the 21st century and concerns for our sustainability in a fragile world, Ecologies for Learning and Practice is an essential guide for all who seek to encourage and facilitate learning in a world that is fundamentally ecological in nature.

Nested Ecologies
Nested Ecologies

Author: Rosalynn A. Vega

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2023-05-04

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1477326863

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How functional medicine leverages systems biology and epigenetic science to treat the microbiome and reverse chronic disease. Each body is a system within a system--an ecology within the larger context of social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental factors. This is one of the lessons of epigenetics, whereby structural inequalities are literally encoded in our genes. But our ecological embeddedness extends beyond DNA, for each body also teems with trillions of bacteria, yeast, and fungi, all of them imprints of our individual milieus. Nested Ecologies asks what it would mean to take seriously our microbial being, given that our internal ecologies are shaped by inequalities embedded in our physical and social environments. Further, Rosalynn Vega argues that health practices focused on patients' unique biology inadvertently reiterate systemic inequities. In particular, functional medicine--which attempts to heal chronic disease by leveraging epigenetic science and treating individual microbiomes--reduces illness to problems of "lifestyle," principally diet, while neglecting the inability of poor people to access nutrition. Functional medicine thus undermines its own critique of the economics of health care. Drawing on novel digital ethnographies and reflecting on her own experience of chronic illness, Vega challenges us to rethink not only the determinants of well-being but also what it is to be human.

The Ecological Brain
The Ecological Brain

Author: Luis H. Favela

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-22

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1003830358

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The Ecological Brain is the first book of its kind, using complexity science to integrate the seemingly disparate fields of ecological psychology and neuroscience. The book develops a unique framework for unifying investigations and explanations of mind that span brain, body, and environment: the NeuroEcological Nexus Theory (NExT). Beginning with an introduction to the history of the fields, the author provides an assessment of why ecological psychology and neuroscience are commonly viewed as irreconcilable methods for investigating and explaining cognition, intelligent behavior, and the systems that realize them. The book then progresses to its central aim: presenting a unified investigative and explanatory framework offering concepts, methods, and theories applicable across neural and ecological scales of investigation. By combining the core principles of ecological psychology, neural population dynamics, and synergetics under a unified complexity science approach, NExT offers a compressive investigative framework to explain and understand neural, bodily, and environmental contributions to perception-action and other forms of intelligent behavior and thought. The book progresses the conversation around the role of brains in ecological psychology, as well as bodies and environments in neuroscience. It is essential reading for all students of ecological psychology, perception, cognitive sciences, and neuroscience, as well as anyone interested in the history and philosophy of the brain/mind sciences and their state-of-the-art methods and theories.

Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 1
Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World, Volume 1

Author: Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-12-04

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 0262535793

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Tools for navigating today's hyper-connected, rapidly changing, and radically contingent white water world. Design Unbound presents a new tool set for having agency in the twenty-first century, in what the authors characterize as a white water world—rapidly changing, hyperconnected, and radically contingent. These are the tools of a new kind of practice that is the offspring of complexity science, which gives us a new lens through which to view the world as entangled and emerging, and architecture, which is about designing contexts. In such a practice, design, unbound from its material thingness, is set free to design contexts as complex systems. In a world where causality is systemic, entangled, in flux, and often elusive, we cannot design for absolute outcomes. Instead, we need to design for emergence. Design Unbound not only makes this case through theory but also presents a set of tools to do so. With case studies that range from a new kind of university to organizational, and even societal, transformation, Design Unbound draws from a vast array of domains: architecture, science and technology, philosophy, cinema, music, literature and poetry, even the military. It is presented in five books, bound as two volumes. Different books within the larger system of books will resonate with different reading audiences, from architects to people reconceiving higher education to the public policy or defense and intelligence communities. The authors provide different entry points allowing readers to navigate their own pathways through the system of books.