Cognitive Agency Research Articles

The Autonomous Mind: The Right to Freedom of Thought in the Twenty-First Century.

To lose freedom of thought (FoT) is to lose our dignity, our democracy and our very selves. Accordingly, the right to FoT receives absolute protection under international human rights law. However, this foundational right has been neither significantly developed nor often utilized. The contours of this right urgently need to be defined due to twenty-first century threats to FoT posed by new technologies. As such, this paper draws on law and psychology to consider what the right to FoT should be in the twenty-first century. After discussing contemporary threats to FoT, and recent developments in our understanding of thought that can inform the development of the right, this paper considers three elements of the right; the rights not to reveal one's thoughts, not to be penalized for one's thoughts, and not to have one's thoughts manipulated. The paper then considers, for each element, why it should exist, how the law currently treats it, and challenges that will shape it going forward. The paper concludes that the law should develop the right to FoT with the clear understanding that what this aims to secure is mental autonomy. This process should hence begin by establishing the core mental processes that enable mental autonomy, such as attentional and cognitive agency. The paper argues that the domain of the right to FoT should be extended to include external actions that are arguably constitutive of thought, including internet searches and diaries, hence shielding them with absolute protection. It is stressed that law must protect us from threats to FoT from both states and corporations, with governments needing to act under the positive aspect of the right to ensure societies are structured to facilitate mental autonomy. It is suggested that in order to support mental autonomy, information should be provided in autonomy-supportive contexts and friction introduced into decision making processes to facilitate second-order thought. The need for public debate about how society wishes to balance risk and mental autonomy is highlighted, and the question is raised as to whether the importance attached to thought has changed in our culture. The urgency of defending FoT is re-iterated.

The Self, Agency and Spatial Externalizations of Inner Verbal Thoughts, and Auditory Verbal Hallucinations.

Aim: Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVH) are experienced as the “voices” of others (O-AVH) or self (S-AVH) in internal space/inside the head (IS-AVH) or external space (ES-AVH), and are considered to result from agency and spatial externalizations of inner speech. Both types of externalizations are conflated, and the relationship between these externalizations and AVH experiences is unclear. In this paper, I investigate the relationship between cognitive agency and spatial externalizations and between these externalizations and the types of AVH experience. Method: Twenty-five patients with history of AVH and 24 matched healthy controls performed agency and spatial distinction tasks: distinction between self-generated (read) (S) sentences and other-generated (O) sentences, and between sentences read silently (experienced in internal space, IS) and sentences read aloud (experienced in external space, ES). Regression analyses between misattribution biases (S-O vs. IS-ES, and O-S vs. ES-IS) were obtained. t tests were used to compare misattribution biases between AVH subtypes (S-AVH vs. O-AVH, and IS-AVH vs. ES-AVH). Results: Regressions suggest that agency distinction is independent from spatial distinction in both groups. O-AVH and S-AVH subgroups differed only with respect to S-O bias, and IS-AVH and ES-AVH subgroups differed only with respect to IS-ES bias. Conclusion: These results suggest that agency and spatial externalizations of inner speech are independent at phenomenological and cognitive and levels; and that these externalizations are co-related across levels. I discuss the implications of these findings in the wider context of research on AVH and on the experience of self.

Commentary: The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy.

Commentary: The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy.

On Virtue, Credit and Safety

According to robust virtue epistemology, the difference between knowledge and mere true belief is that in cases of knowledge, the subject’s cognitive success is attributable to her cognitive agency. But what does it take for a subject’s cognitive success to be attributable to her cognitive agency? A promising answer is that the subject’s cognitive abilities have to contribute to the safety of her epistemic standing with respect to her inquiry, in order for her cognitive success to be attributable to her cognitive agency. Call this idea the contribution thesis. The author will argue that the contribution thesis follows naturally from virtue epistemological accounts of knowledge, and that it is precisely the contribution thesis that allows the virtue epistemologist to deal with a wide variety of objections. Nevertheless, the principal aim of this paper is to argue that virtue epistemological theories of knowledge that are committed to the contribution thesis are ultimately untenable. There are cases of knowledge where the subject’s cognitive abilities do not improve the safety of the subject’s belief.

Performance normativity and here-and-now doxastic agency

Sosa famously argues that epistemic normativity is a species of “performance normativity,” comparing beliefs to archery shots. However, philosophers have traditionally conceived of beliefs as states, which means that they are not dynamic or telic like performances. A natural response to this tension is to argue that belief formation rather than belief itself is the proper target of epistemic normativity. This response is rejected here on grounds of the way it obscures the “here and now” exercise of cognitive agency that I view as central to any account of epistemic normativity and doxastic agency. Although the etiology of a belief can be relevant to its normative status, often so much more is relevant and more centrally so. This generates a dilemma for anyone following Sosa in pursuing the idea that epistemic normativity is a species of performance normativity.

Epistemic dependence and cognitive ability

In a series of papers, Jesper Kallestrup and Duncan Pritchard argue that the thesis that knowledge is a cognitive success because of cognitive ability (robust virtue epistemology) is incompatible with the idea that whether or not an agent’s true belief amounts to knowledge can significantly depend upon factors beyond her cognitive agency (epistemic dependence). In particular, certain purely modal facts seem to preclude knowledge, while the contribution of other agents’ cognitive abilities seems to enable it. Kallestrup and Pritchard’s arguments are targeted against views that hold that all it takes to manifest one’s cognitive agency is to properly exercise one’s belief-forming abilities. I offer an account of the notion of cognitive ability according to which our epistemic resources are not exhausted by abilities to produce true beliefs as outputs, but also include dispositions to stop belief-formation when actual or modal circumstances are not suitable for it (precautionary cognitive abilities). Knowledge, I argue, can be accordingly conceived as a cognitive success that is also due to the latter. The resulting version of robust virtue epistemology helps explain how purely modal facts as well as other agents’ cognitive abilities may have a bearing on the manifestation of one’s cognitive agency, which shows in turn that robust virtue epistemology and epistemic dependence are not incompatible after all.

How Otto did not extend his mind, but might have: Dynamic systems theory and social-cultural group selection

Proponents of cognitive Situationism argue that the human mind is embodied, embedded in both natural and social-cultural environments and extended creating both extended and distributed cognition. Anti-situationists reject all or some of these claims. I argue that four major objections to extended cognition: (1) the mark of the cognitive, (2) the function-identity fallacy, (3) cognitive bloat, and (4) scientific irrelevance lose much of their sting in the case of distributed cognition, the extension of cognitive agency to a group of cognitive agents, such as a scientific research team. However, I claim that a crucial fifth challenge, that advocates of the extended mind commit the causal-constitution fallacy, has yet to be satisfactorily addressed. I focus on Spyridon Palermos’ use of dynamic systems theory to refute this charge and I argue that his appeal to dynamic systems theory as a way of understanding system-constitution fails. Instead, I suggest a social-cultural group selection hypothesis for understanding system-constitution. But, I leave it for another day to elaborate that hypothesis’ empirical plausibility.

A New Measure of Hallucinatory States and a Discussion of REM Sleep Dreaming as a Virtual Laboratory for the Rehearsal of Embodied Cognition.

Hallucinatory states are experienced not only in connection with drugs and psychopathologies but occur naturally and spontaneously across the human circadian cycle: Our nightly dreams bring multimodal experiences in the absence of adequate external stimuli. The current study proposes a new, tighter measure of these hallucinatory states: Sleep onset, REM sleep, and non-REM sleep are shown to differ with regard to (a) motor imagery indicating interactions with a rich imaginative world, and (b) cognitive agency that could enable sleepers to recognize their hallucinatory state. Mentation reports from the different states were analysed quantitatively with regard to two grammatical-semantic constructs, motor agency and cognitive agency. The present results support earlier physiological and psychological evidence in revealing a decline in cognitive functions and an increase in simulated interactions with a hallucinatory world, en route to normal REM sleep. This leads us to introduce the hypothesis that REM sleep, which exhibits remarkably high levels of (simulated) sensorimotor processes, may have evolved to serve as a virtual laboratory for the development and rehearsal of embodied cognition. The new measure of hallucinatory states presented here may also hold implications for the study of executive functions and (meta-)cognitions, which might be interesting, for example, for the investigation of lucid dreaming.

Do More Strikes Mean a Stronger Working Class's Agency: A Comparative Study in Post-Socialist China

Workers’ agency is important to understand the Chinese working class's formation and gauge its capacity to forge transformative social and political movements. Recent labor study literature posits that class inequality and volatile capital movement leads to stronger labor resistance in post-socialist China. Drawing on some of the theories on class consciousness and agency, this article re-conceptualizes workers’ agency, which is broken down into behavioral and cognitive agencies. It examines Chinese workers’ cognitive agency in the megacities and lower-tier cities via statistical survey data. This analysis of cognitive agency is new to the Chinese labor study. I argue that a relatively low class identification, poor understanding of democracy and politics, and weak sense of solidarity combine to reveal a new working class in post-socialist China that, in general, shows both weak cognitive agency and growing conservativism. This distinction of workers’ behavioral and cognitive agency is vital as it may eventually challenge all labor interest parties to re-think their current strategies of labor engagement and organization.

The importance of context and cognitive agency in developing police knowledge

This paper argues the current exposition of police knowledge through the discourses of police science and evidence-based policing (EBP) leads to exaggerated claims about what is, and can be, known in policing. This new orthodoxy underestimates the challenges of applying knowledge within culturally mediated police practice. The paper draws upon virtue epistemology, highlighting the role that cognitive agency plays in establishing knowledge claims. We challenge the assumption that it is possible to derive what works in all instances of certain aspects of policing and suggest that it would be more apt to speak about what worked within a specific police context.

Nature as a network of morphological infocomputational processes for cognitive\xa0agents

This paper presents a view of nature as a network of infocomputational agents organized in a dynamical hierarchy of levels. It provides a framework for unification of currently disparate understandings of natural, formal, technical, behavioral and social phenomena based on information as a structure, differences in one system that cause the differences in another system, and computation as its dynamics, i.e. physical process of morphological change in the informational structure. We address some of the frequent misunderstandings regarding the natural/morphological computational models and their relationships to physical systems, especially cognitive systems such as living beings. Natural morphological infocomputation as a conceptual framework necessitates generalization of models of computation beyond the traditional Turing machine model presenting symbol manipulation, and requires agent-based concurrent resource-sensitive models of computation in order to be able to cover the whole range of phenomena from physics to cognition. The central role of agency, particularly material vs. cognitive agency is highlighted.

Embodied Mind – Ensocialled Body: Navigating Bodily and Social Processes within Accounts of Human Cognitive Agency

There is a prevalent tension within recent cognitive scientific accounts of human selfhood in that either bodily processes or social processes are explanatorily favored at the expense of the other. This tension is elucidated by the body-social problem (Kyselo, 2014) and at its heart is ambiguity regarding the body’s role within embodied cognitive science. Drawing on a range of phenomenological and empirical insights, I propose that we can avoid the problem by embracing the concept of an ensocialled body, in which all organic bodily processes are simultaneously social processes from the perspective of human cognitive agency.

Epistemic Normativity and Cognitive Agency

AbstractOn the assumption that genuinely normative demands concern things connected in some way to our agency, i.e. what we exercise in doing things with or for reasons, epistemologists face an important question: are there genuine epistemic norms governing belief, and if so where in the vicinity of belief are we to find the requisite cognitive agency? Extant accounts of cognitive agency tend to focus on belief itself or the event of belief‐formation to answer this question, to the exclusion of the activity of maintaining a system of beliefs. This paper argues that a full account of epistemic normativity will need to make sense of this activity as a core locus of cognitive agency. This idea is used to motivate the conclusion that one important and often overlooked kind of epistemic norms is the kind of norms governing the various cognitive activities by which we check, sustain, and adjust our belief systems.

Does History Education Promote Nationalism in China? A ‘Limited Effect’ Explanation

ABSTRACTMost studies of Chinese nationalism are based on an unstated and unexamined assumption that history education in Chinese schools can effectively instill the official memory of the anti-Japanese war into students. This article tests this assumption through a multi-method study based on a survey, a textual analysis and qualitative interviews with high school students and teachers. The findings show that history education (including both in-class and extracurricular forms) has limited effects on nationalism among Chinese high school students. The in-class textbook education is largely ineffective in forging nationalistic sentiments among students, whereas some extracurricular activities, such as visiting the ‘patriotic education bases’, have limited effects. The limited effects can be explained by four factors: (1) changes in the content and form of the new history textbooks; (2) the students’ and teachers’ actual uses of the textbooks; (3) the students’ cognitive and emotional agency in receiving history education; and (4) alternative information sources such as the media and family memory. This study contributes to the understanding of Chinese nationalism and historical memory by emphasizing the complexity involved in receiving official narratives.

Personal Growth as a Correlate of Gratitude, Hope and Curiosity Among College Students

Positive psychology is a relatively contemporary field of psychology which was developed on the belief that by tapping on their strengths and virtues, individuals can lead a meaningful and fulfilling life. Instead of pondering over the question What is wrong with me? it diverts the attention of the individuals by asking them What is Right with me? It does not focus on positive thinking but on adapting a positive outlook on life for leading a more efficient lifestyle. When an individual intentionally engages in this process of positive outlook, it involves cognitive and behavioral elements such as believing that change within the self is possible, valuing this type of change, and knowing how to change. This intentional engagement process is known as Personal Growth.Personal Growth Initiative as defined by Christine Robitschek (1998, 1999) is an active, intentional involvement in changing and developing as a person. Not only must the growth or change be in the person's awareness; it also must be an intentional process. People who have high levels of PGI recognize and capitalize on opportunities for self growth. They also seek out and create situations that will facilitate their growth. In other words, Personal Growth entails continued self-improvement, achievement of self-knowledge, and actualization of potential in various life domains (Ryff, 1989). It involves physical, emotional, spiritual, social, and mental growth of an individual to carry out a well-rounded life. Negative thinking, emotional baggage, toxic environment and unhealthy habits all hinder the process of personal growth which can lead to limiting beliefs about the self, situations, others and the world causing to obstruct the visions to contemplate ones strengths and happiness causing to stuck up in a negative loop. Thus, personal growth is an imperative component of the field of positive psychology which is extensively studied in diverse populations with variety of constructs in its sphere.One such variable of study is Curiosity, Dictionaries commonly define it as a disposition to inquire, investigate, or seek after knowledge; a desire to gratify the mind the new information or objects of interest; inquisitives. Curiosity therefore overlaps with positive psychological construct personal growth. Curiosity is an intentional character to seek knowledge which leads to expertise, whereas, Personal Growth is a deliberate process to observe and facilitate development by creating conditions complimenting the same. Hence, it can be safe to conclude that curiosity is a key element among the people with high Personal Growth Initiative. Curiosity is a trait of an inquisitive mind to seek knowledge and indulge in exploration. Curious people are attracted towards unfamiliar situations, new people and novel experiences. They are increasingly looking forward to explore and investigate new arenas of learning, notjust at the surface level but to the deeper meaning in the field of their interest. Curiosity enhances the happiness, quality of social relationships, and has seen to be highly correlated with the intelligence level and the health of one's individual. Curiosity is the entry level point to the sources of our meaning and satisfaction.As the level of curiosity increases the feeling of appreciation for everything that has our attention increases, leading to augmented sense of contentment, broader sense of thinking, happiness and meaning of life. It is one of the key components in the discipline of positive psychology. The study conducted by Todd D. Kashdan, Paul Rose, and Frank Fincham in 2001 concludes that the degree to which people are curious actively influences their personal growth opportunities and the level of intimacy that develops when they meet someone new.Another construct from the field of positive psychology which shares several important features with Personal Growth is Hope. They both involve (1) teachable goal-directed metacognitive processes,(2) setting clear future-oriented goals, (3) developing pathways to those goals, and (4) fostering the cognitive agency to implement those plans or pathways (Robitschek, 1998,1999; Snyder et al. …

The borderlands of waking: Quantifying the transition from reflective thought to hallucination in sleep onset.

We lose waking consciousness spontaneously and regularly over the circadian cycle. It seems that every time we fall asleep, reflective thinking gradually gives way to our interactions with an imaginary, hallucinatory world that brings multimodal experiences in the absence of adequate external stimuli. The present study investigates this transition, proposing a new measure of hallucinatory states. Reflective thinking and motor imagery were quantified in 150 mentation reports provided by 16 participants after forced awakenings from different physiology-monitored time intervals after sleep onset. Cognitive agency analysis and motor agency analysis--which are objective (grammatical-semantic) tools derived from linguistic theories--show (i) a decrease in reflective thinking which sleepers would need to acknowledge the hallucinatory quality of their state, and (ii) an increase in motor imagery, indicating interactions with a hallucinatory world. By mapping these spontaneous changes in human consciousness onto physiology, we can in the long run explore the conditions of its decline, and possibilities for treatment.

Supplemental Material for Mothers’ Depressive Symptoms and Children’s Cognitive and Social Agency: Predicting First-Grade Cognitive Functioning

Supplemental Material for Mothers’ Depressive Symptoms and Children’s Cognitive and Social Agency: Predicting First-Grade Cognitive Functioning

The Structure of Cognitive Agency

Credit theories of knowledge have to explain the conditions under which beliefs are attributable to cognitive agents. The most promising way to explain these conditions is to offer an account of cognitive agency that is a plausible development of the uncontroversial notion that we are believing subjects. This article develops and defends a Structuralist model of cognitive agency.

Simulation, self-extinction, and philosophy in the service of human civilization

Nick Bostrom's recently patched "simulation argument" (Bostrom in Philos Q 53:243---255, 2003; Bostrom and Kulczycki in Analysis 71:54---61, 2011) purports to demonstrate the probability that we "live" now in an "ancestor simulation"--that is as a simulation of a period prior to that in which a civilization more advanced than our own--"post-human"--becomes able to simulate such a state of affairs as ours. As such simulations under consideration resemble "brains in vats" (BIVs) and may appear open to similar objections, the paper begins by reviewing objections to BIV-type proposals, specifically those due a presumed mad envatter. In counter example, we explore the motivating rationale behind current work in the development of psychologically realistic social simulations. Further concerns about rendering human cognition in a computational medium are confronted through review of current dynamic systems models of cognitive agency. In these models, aspects of the human condition are reproduced that may in other forms be considered incomputable, i.e., political voice, predictive planning, and consciousness. The paper then argues that simulations afford a unique potential to secure a post-human future, and may be necessary for a pre-post-human civilization like our own to achieve and to maintain a post-human situation. Long-standing philosophical interest in tools of this nature for Aristotle's "statesman" and more recently for E.O. Wilson in the 1990s is observed. Self-extinction-level threats from State and individual levels of organization are compared, and a likely dependence on large-scale psychologically realistic simulations to get past self-extinction-level threats is projected. In the end, Bostrom's basic argument for the conviction that we exist now in a simulation is reaffirmed.

The Normative Turn in Enactive Theory: An Examination of Its Roots and Implications

This paper traces the development of enactive concepts of value and normativity from their roots in the canonical work of Varela et al. (Embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1991) through more recent works of Ezequiel Di Paolo and others. It aims to show the central importance of these concepts for enactive theory while exposing a potentially troublesome ambiguity in their definition. Most definitions of enactive normativity are purely proscriptive, but it seems that enactive theories of cognitive agency and experience demand something more. On the other hand, it is not clear that anything other than proscriptive normativity can be made compatible with the enactive tenet of autonomy and the rejection of representations.