Autonomous Traits Research Articles

Ensuring wholeness: Using Code Biology to overcome the autonomy-heteronomy divide

This paper presents an alternative to Autopoietic Enactivism in the form of a Code Biology-informed account on human sense-making. It demonstrates the possibility of avoiding a dualism between, on the one hand, the autonomy of individual sense-makers and, on the other, the heteronomy of social facts. This is possible because code biological principles are pertinent to different levels of biological and non-biological organization and cut across the organismic self—non-self border. Analytically, one can maintain the overall integrity of an agent as a separable unit of (inter)action while also avoiding an autonomy-heteronomy divide. We therefore emphasise the constitutive role of codified relations that, while irreducible to operational closure, connect the sense-making agent's social interactions to those of other agents. The move grants a central, constitutive role to external norms (or, heteronomy) as altering the internal, embodied integrity of an autonomous agent. Drawing on the case of prosthetics use in amputees, we show that successful integration of a prothesis cannot be reduced to the substitution of a missing limb. Rather, it demands experienced bodily wholeness on the part of the agent which can only be achieved by attuning and adapting to use of a prosthesis while also internalizing social norms and values. It is concluded that many aspects of the living actualize codified relations which incorporate both heteronomous and autonomous traits.

Harnessing Soft Logic to Represent the Privacy Paradox

The digital era introduces a significant issue concerning the preservation of individuals’ privacy. Each individual has two autonomous traits, privacy concern which indicates how anxious that person is about preserving privacy, and privacy behavior which refers to the actual actions the individual takes to preserve privacy. The significant gap between these two traits is called the privacy paradox. While the existence and the extensive distribution of the privacy paradox is widely-considered in both academic and public discussion, no convincing explanation of the phenomenon has been provided. In this study we harness a new mathematical approach, “soft logic,” to better represent the reality of the privacy paradox. Soft numbers extend zero from a singularity to an infinite one-dimensional axis, thus enabling the representation of contradictory situations that exist simultaneously, i.e., a paradox. We develop a mathematical model for representing the privacy paradox with soft numbers, and demonstrate its application empirically. This new theory has the potential to address domains that mix soft human reality with robust technological reality.

Patterns of Life: Intertwining Identity and Cognition

This paper presents an alternative to Autopoietic Enactivism in the form of a Code Biology-informed account on human sense-making. It demonstrates the possibility of avoiding a dualism between, on the one hand, the autonomy of individual sense-makers and, on the other, the heteronomy of social facts. This is possible because code biological principles are pertinent to different levels of biological and non-biological organization and cut across the organismic self—non-self border. Analytically, one can maintain the overall integrity of an agent as a separable unit of (inter)action while also avoiding an autonomy-heteronomy divide. We therefore emphasise the constitutive role of codified relations that, while irreducible to operational closure, connect the sense-making agent's social interactions to those of other agents. The move grants a central, constitutive role to external norms (or, heteronomy) as altering the internal, embodied integrity of an autonomous agent. Drawing on the case of prosthetics use in amputees, we show that successful integration of a prothesis cannot be reduced to the substitution of a missing limb. Rather, it demands experienced bodily wholeness on the part of the agent which can only be achieved by attuning and adapting to use of a prosthesis while also internalizing social norms and values. It is concluded that many aspects of the living actualize codified relations which incorporate both heteronomous and autonomous traits.

Sociotropy, autonomy, and dysphoric emotional responses to specific classes of stress: A psychophysiological evaluation.

The aim of this study was to assess the ability of trait measures of sociotropy and autonomy to predict immediate emotional responses to imagery conditions depicting social rejection and achievement failure. Emotional responses were assessed by self-report techniques and by 2 putative psychophysiological measures of dysphoric mood: heart rate and facial muscle activity. Undergraduate volunteers (N = 100) were assessed for sociotropic and autonomous traits, general levels of depression, and sensory imagery ability, before performing a series of imagery trials depicting neutral and stressful (social rejection and achievement failure) scenes. Results provided support for the role of sociotropy as a vulnerability factor to dysphoric response to social rejection and to a lesser degree for achievement failure, but there was no support for autonomy as a vulnerability factor for either type of stressful script.

Conjonctures inverses: Le mouvement des prix à Potosí pendant le XVIIIe siècle

Au début des années 1960, dans cette même revue, Ruggiero Romano publiait ses articles pionniers sur les prix au Chili, et plus généralement en Amérique du Sud, pendant le XVIIIe siècle : le moment semblait alors venu d'appliquer à un nouveau territoire une méthode que l'historiographie française illustrait depuis une trentaine d'années. Une ère labroussienne allait-elle s'ouvrir dans les recherches sur l'Amérique coloniale ? Les thèses de Enrique Florescano sur Mexico, et de Anibal Arcondo sur Côrdoba parurent confirmer cette perspective. Puis tout tourna court, et ces travaux restèrent sans lendemain : ils apparaissent, vingt ans plus tard, comme un bref épisode plutôt que comme le début d'une ère nouvelle.Ce faux départ peut s'expliquer par la conjonction de deux facteurs. D'une part, dans les années 1960 déjà, en Europe même, on commençait à prendre conscience de l'impasse dans laquelle s'engageait l'histoire des prix : les difficultés méthodologiques concernant l'élaboration et la lecture des séries suscitaient de vives polémiques, ainsi qu'un certain scepticisme. D'autre part, en Amérique latine, on se rendait compte également que les prix ne sont pas un indicateur suffisant pour des sociétés dont de larges secteurs (surtout indigènes) échappent, au moins partiellement, à l'emprise du marché.

Marginalization, reproduction and assaults against teachers: Ideas on the contradictions of ideological social control

We have analyzed school stratification and delinquent behavior by demonstrating that the connection between the two can be explained more completely by reference to the nature and functioning of American capitalism. By way of a thorough analysis of the reproduction forces at work today in American capitalism, as well as the way consciousness is formed through the satisfaction and fulfillment of species needs and powers, our investigation linked delinquent behavior (assaults against teachers) and school stratification with the social system of which they are embedded. Concentrating initially on the structural forces at work within the labor market, we were able to uncover the foundations which mold the social relations of production. We then turned our investigation to the school, revealing how the underlying function of secondary education today is the reproduction of the social relations of production. With a thorough understanding of these two interrelated phenomena, we were then able to explain why minority students attack secondary school teachers at a higher rate than other students. Specifically, it is because of thecontradiction between the creation of a personality possessing autonomous and independent behavior traits, with emphasis on violent behavior patterns as a means of solving interpersonal problems (marginalization), and the austere authoritarian and control mechanisms of the school (reproduction).