Triadic Relations Research Articles

Intérêt de l’exploration des interactions triadiques dans les conceptions par don d’ovocytes

The study is interested in the impact of oocyte donation on the parenthood construction and the family dynamics. ObjectivesThe aim was to evaluate the nature and the destiny of psychic problematics mobilized by infertility and oocyte donation experience. We wanted to determine whether the pregnancy and the post-partum could be a time for the elaboration of the infertility and oocyte donation experience. The aim was to assess also the family alliance and to determine whether the infertility and gamete donation would infiltrate the triadic relations. MethodWe met 8 couples at 7–8 months of pregnancy and 3 months after the childbirth. We used semi-structured interviews inspired by IRMAG during pregnancy and by “Entretien R” (Stern) after birth. The family alliance was assessed with the Lausanne Triadic Play. ResultsThe pregnancy and the post-partum period can variably support an elaboration process of infertility and oocyte donation experience. For some families, this experience infiltrates the triadic relations and leads to a non-functional alliance family.

Triadic Relations in a Game of Pachisi

ABSTRACTA triad is the smallest network form where one can study how a link affects a link or a node affects a link indirectly connected. Through triads, one can glimpse the more complex relational dynamics in larger networks. Studies of various triadic relationships have gained growing interest among OM scholars in recent years as both researchers and practitioners recognize that such a triadic framework allows us to appreciate the relational complexity in larger supply networks. We adapted the Pachisi game to demonstrate the triadic relational dynamics among firms in a supply network. We have played this game in various undergraduate and graduate classes. This simple game has enabled us to introduce such topics as supply networks and coalition strategies in a lively classroom environment. We have received positive feedback from the students validating an effective learning experience.

Harmony of the triads: A response to Nicholas Swindale.

Despite few misunderstandings, I thank Nicholas Swindale for his efforts in writing a lengthy review of Harmony, Perspective and Triadic Cognition (HPTC; Cook, 2012). He is precisely the type of reader I wanted to address-someone with broad knowl- edge in human psychology and an interest in the possibility of a general theory of the mind. Unfortunately, despite a history of abject failures misapplying sophisticated mathematical theory (sta- tistical mechanics, chaos theory, catastrophe theory, and so on) to the problems of mind, he seems to suffer from the scientoid delusion that formal mathematics is the key to psychological insight. He is therefore quick to dismiss the kinds of low-level mental associations that I argue are central to the way people actually think.With regard to his mixed evaluation of my proposal concerning triadic mechanisms, I would say that his accusations of occult numerology are truly off target. My proposal in HPTC is that concrete three-way associations have been amply demonstrated in the specifically human aspects of cognition related to music, art, language, tools, and attention. The essential point that Swindale repeatedly acknowledges and then repeatedly forgets is that: Fundamental cognitive triads at the heart of the outstanding talents of our species are necessary, but not sufficient, to produce the astounding behavioral accomplishments of human culture. The sufficiency argument will demand many more insights and en- cyclopedic knowledge that I do not possess, but the minimalist cognitive necessities are the issues that I have addressed in HPTC. I would remind Swindale that it took more than a half-century to proceed from the biological insight of the structure of DNA to the unraveling of the human genome, and much work still remains before we understand the genetic data that is in hand. In my view, cognitive neuroscience is now mature enough to elucidate funda- mental psychological processes- but it will take some time before a comprehensive theory of the human mind is established.In certain key subfields within human psychology, there is already clear evidence of triadic mechanisms (often, but not al- ways, unprecedented in the animal world) that are, to varying degrees of certainty, the starting points for our unusual cognitive and behavioral skills. A formal theory of the unique set of triadic processes (three-way Boolean logic?) is yet to be achieved, so it may be possible to put Swindale's intellect to constructive pur- pose, but I would nonetheless argue that the triadic arguments in HPTC are successful in clearing the way toward precisely that goal.The tonal combinations that result in the phenomena of musical harmony are undoubtedly the most easily perceived and most well-known of the perceptual triads, but the alignment of visual cues that lead to pictorial depth perception (light source/object/cast shadow or three similar objects aligned in linear perspective) is also empirically unambiguous. In linguistics, the three-way tree structure of the phrase lies at the heart of Chomsky's transfor- mational grammar. Its triadic nature has been discussed by Derek Bickerton (1990) and Guy Deutscher (2005), among others, but most of modern-day syntactic theory deals with the complexities of multiple recursively embedded phrases. Similarly, most empir- ical studies on social interactions address higher-level issues, but the underlying phenomenon known as joint has a well-understood triadic cognitive basis. See, for example, work by Michael Tomasello (2008) and Rebecca Saxe (2006, p. 235) who notes that such cognition requires representing triadic relations: You and Me, collaboratively looking at, working on or talking about This. In all of these cases, the psychophysics of the triadic phenomena has received much less attention than the more com- plex multiply embedded triads of real psychology, but there is an argument to be made that the first step in meaningful, reductionist, scientific analysis is identification of the core phenomena that can then be used to reconstruct larger-scale phenomena. …

Putting Sustainability into Sustainable Human Development

Abating the threat climate change poses to the lives of future people clearly challenges our development models. The 2011 Human Development Report rightly focuses on the integral links between sustainability and equity. However, the human development and capabilities approach emphasizes the expansion of people's capabilities simpliciter, which is questionable in view of environmental sustainability. We argue that capabilities should be defined as triadic relations between an agent, constraints and possible functionings. This triadic syntax particularly applies to climate change: since people's lives and capabilities are dependent on the environment, sustainable human development should also include constraining human activities in order to prevent losses in future people's well-being due to the adverse effects of exacerbated climate change. On this basis, we will advocate that the goals of sustainable human development should be informed by a framework that consists of enhancing capabilities up to a threshold level, as well as constraining the functionings beyond this threshold in terms of their greenhouse gas emissions.

Intervention in Conflicts from a Network Perspective

Whether neutral or on the side of a combatant, third-party states’ intervention in ongoing interstate conflicts is a triadic phenomenon which involves ties between a joining state and the two originators of the dispute. Existing studies on this topic have failed to fully capture the triadic nature of intervention, preferring instead to focus either on the joiner’s motivations or on the distinct dyadic relationships between joiners and the two separate combatants. Building on classic structural theories of triadic balance and on prior work by Maoz et al. (2007), in this article we address the triadic aspect of both mediation and “joining behavior”. The nature of the triadic relations among disputants and third parties influences not just the likelihood of intervention, but also the type of intervention. When triadic relations are unbalanced, third parties are more likely to intervene as intermediaries. On the contrary, when triadic relations are balanced, third parties are more likely to intervene in a partisan manner. We explore our main hypotheses by constructing a triadic data set that combines Corbetta and Dixon’s (2005) data on partisan third-party interventions and Frazier and Dixon’s (2006) data on neutral (intermediary) interventions in militarized interstate disputes with a friendship–hostility scale extracted from international events data (IDEA and COPDAB).

Processos interativos de bebês em creche

O artigo trata de estudo sobre interações de bebês com pares, que buscou apreender aspectos qualitativos desses processos relacionais, considerando particularidades dos bebês. No estudo, utilizaram-se videogravações e entrevistas, do projeto "Processos de Adaptação de Bebês a Creche", que acompanhou 21 bebês (4-13 meses) em creche. Os dados foram coletados e analisados pela perspectiva da Rede de Significações. Selecionaram-se, então, cinco episódios, a partir de três sujeitos-focais e seus pares. Análise indica ocorrência de interação, em que se destacam o papel do olhar, relações triádicas (mesmo em bebês menores de nove meses), a abreviação de recursos comunicativos e a empatia. Ainda, apesar da ausência de linguagem verbal, verificou-se ocorrência de significação. Algumas implicações teórico-práticas são apontadas.

Triadic Power Relations in Rural Nepal

We generalise Basu's model of triadic power. For one landlord and multiple merchants the landlord's threat towards a labourer becomes credible in the original stage game. For multiple landlords and merchants we generalise more recent solutions. We estimate a reduced form of the model, where equilibrium rural wages are a function of the number of landlords, distance to merchants, characteristics of the labourers and the distance to external markets. We apply Living Standards Measurement Study data from Nepal, and find support for the triadic model. In particular, the influence via the merchants depends on the number of landlords.

Network Analysis and Other Mathematical Perspectives in the Analysis of Philosophical Issues Regarding the Economic Crisis and the Law from the Bottom Up

Network Analysis is used for mapping clusters of actors and their relation as subjects responsible for the economic crisis of 2008. The history of Network Analysis is presented focusing on the role triadic relations of its founders had in its development and how these pioneers have limited the field by a historical path dependence on nodes and edges disregarding angle measurements and their visual relation to classical geometrical figures. The strength of three dimensional bounded but infinite fractal triangular relations and the significance of even and odd numbers in the identification of balanced and imbalanced networks are explored as improvements to Network Analysis. The improved Network Analysis methodology is then developed as a relevant and efficient tool for the analysis of data and evidence in adjudicatory proceedings and law enforcement.

The Micro-Macro Link for the Theory of Structural Balance

I consider the principle of structural balance that is commonly characterized with the aphorisms: “The friend of a friend is a friend, the friend of an enemy is an enemy, the enemy of a friend is an enemy, and the enemy of an enemy is a friend.” I study what patterns of friendship and hostility emerge at the macro-level when actors at the micro-level make friends and enemies in accordance with this principle. Recent studies have drawn attention to configurations that are imbalanced with many triadic relations violating structural balance yet jammed because no change in sentiment in any one relation can accomplish a net reduction in the number of violations of structural balance. The existence of such jammed states suggests that individual behavior consistent with structural balance need not aggregate to system-wide satisfaction of the principle. To investigate this I employ a best-response model of sentiment change on a fixed social network. I show that under a broad set of model conditions only configurations in which all triadic relations satisfy the structural balance principle can emerge. In a close-knit community in which all actors maintain relations with all other actors such a balanced configuration must consist of either one friendship clique or multiple antagonistic groups.

Life and Temporality: The Place of Biosemiotics within Peirce’s General Semiotics

Abstract I would like to present some new perspectives on the reciprocal foundational links which are discemable between Peirce's general semiotics on the one hand and anthroposemiotic and biosemiotic inquiry on the other. To this end I offer an examination of the peculiar place occupied by temporal relations within the relational framework of Peirce's semiotics. I support these considerations by drawing on previous work about a relational world-view presently emerging as a unifying perspective within diverse fields of inquiry (biology, quantum physics, philosophy of inquiry, and mathematics), which I have previously characterized as a "relational tum". A common, positive feature of these developments is the recognition of the relational nature of physical reality. This portends an implicit repudiation of the traditional nominalistic bias of the physical sciences and removes an important obstacle to the acceptance of semiotic ideas. However these new approaches have, up to now, failed to consider any relations other than dyadic relations or their dyadic combinations. I argue for the need to supplement the Peircean elucidation of semiosis in terms of triadic relations with other equally unique relational features, which I characterize as " radical temporality" and selfreference. A brief sketch of the different roles played by relations of temporality in organisms in general ( biosemiotics) as opposed to organisms immersed in a historically constituted culture of symbols and artifacts (anthroposemiotics) serves to disclose the relations of mutual epistemic dependence that underlie these disciplines.

Kosher medicine and medicalized halacha: An exploration of triadic relations among Israeli rabbis, doctors, and infertility patients

ABSTRACTDrawing on my ethnography of rabbinically mediated fertility treatments for observant Jewish couples in Israel, I illuminate two simultaneous processes: the koshering of medical care and the medicalization of rabbinic law. My findings show how hands‐on rabbinic interventions transform doctor–patient relations into rabbi–doctor–patient relations and introduce a network of power relations into clinical practice, at times empowering and at times disempowering patients. This case prompts a reconsideration of scholars’ tendency to view biomedicine in hegemonic terms.

Taking the Relational Turn: Biosemiotics and Some New Trends in Biology

A cluster of similar trends emerging in separate fields of science and philosophy points to new opportunities to apply biosemiotic ideas as tools for conceptual integration in theoretical biology. I characterize these developments as the outcome of a “relational turn” in these disciplines. They signal a shift of attention away from objects and things and towards relational structures and processes. Increasingly sophisticated research technologies of molecular biology have generated an enormous quantity of experimental data, sparking a need for relational approaches that could help to find recurrent patterns in the mass of data. Earlier conceptions of relational biology and cybernetics, once deemed too abstract and speculative, are now resurrected and applied by means of new computational and simulation tools. I think this receptivity should be extended to incorporate nets of semiotic relations as heuristic guides for discerning global patterns of interactions in living systems. In this article I review aspects of systems biology and new directions in evolutionary theory, focusing on the role of circular and downward causation in relational structures and dynamical networks. I also indicate promising avenues of integration of some ideas of biosemiotics with those emerging from these new currents in biology. Relational developments in biology bear a telling similarity to a parallel relational turn presently manifest in the philosophy of science, rooted in the philosophy of physics and mathematics and in different varieties of structural and informational realism. The recognition of the relational nature of reality within these disciplines entails a tacit repudiation of nominalistic biases in science that have hindered the reception of semitiotic conceptions in biology. In previous investigations I explored connections between two kinds of relational structures: the networks of self-referential circular loops that appear pervasively in living systems, and the triadic relational structures that Peircean semiotics places at the basis of all semiotic transactions. Current relational views in the sciences seem oblivious to the difference between dyadic and triadic relations. Incorporating this essential distinction from biosemiotics into other fields could be a first step in seizing the opportunities opened by the relational turn for a renewal of biology and of natural philosophy in general, across disciplinary boundaries.

Explaining Interstate Trust/Distrust in Triadic Relations

Emotion or affect is important to understanding the current international interactions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationships among interstate affects in triads. The hypotheses of structural balance, symmetry, subjectivity and objectivity are tested here. Nations are more likely to trust a target nation when the target trusts them, when their friend trusts the target, when they trust other nations in general, and when other nations in general trust the target. Their attitudes towards the target are not influenced by the fact that their enemy trusts or distrusts the target. The structural balance gives way to some dyads of imbalance. Rather, nations are unlikely to feel friendly towards an enemy of their enemy's. More than 80% of bilateral affects are correctly predicted with the other affect relations only. Some implications on the spread of anti-Americanism and on the role of mediator between two adversaries are discussed.

An evolutionary model of social networks

Social networks in communities, markets, and societies self-organise through the interactions of many individuals. In this paper we use a well-known mechanism of social interactions — the balance of sentiment in triadic relations — to describe the development of social networks. Our model contrasts with many existing network models, in that people not only establish but also break up relations whilst the network evolves. The procedure generates several interesting network features such as a variety of degree distributions and degree correlations. The resulting network converges under certain conditions to a steady critical state where temporal disruptions in triangles follow a power-law distribution.

Aging and Neuroeconomics: Insights from Research on Neuromodulation of Reward-based Decision Making

Abstract ‘Neuroeconomics’ can be broadly defined as the research of how the brain interacts with the environment to make decisions that are functional given individual and contextual constraints. Deciphering such brain-environment transactions requires mechanistic understandings of the neurobiological processes that implement value-dependent decision making. To this end, a common empirical approach is to investigate neural mechanisms of reward-based decision making. Flexible updating of choices and associated expected outcomes in ways that are adaptive for a given task (or a given set of tasks) at hand relies on dynamic neurochemical tuning of the brain’s functional circuitries involved in the representation of tasks, goals and reward prediction. Empirical evidence as well as computational theories indicate that various neurotransmitter systems (e.g., dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin) play important roles in reward-based decision making. In light of the apparent aging-related decline in various aspects of the dopaminergic system as well as the effects of neuromodulation on reward-related processes, this article focuses selectively on the literature that highlights the triadic relations between dopaminergic modulation, reward-based decision making, and aging. Directions for future research on aging and neuroeconomoics are discussed.

Towards the emergence of meaning processes in computers from Peircean semiotics

In this work, we propose a computational approach to the triadic model of Peircean semiosis (meaning processes). We investigate theoretical constraints about the feasibility of simulated semiosis. These constraints, which are basic requirements for the simulation of semiosis, refer to the synthesis of irreducible triadic relations (Sign–Object–Interpretant). We examine the internal organization of the triad S–O–I, that is, the relative position of its elements and how they relate to each other. We also suggest a multi-level approach based on self-organization principles. In this context, semiosis is described as an emergent process. Nevertheless, the term ‘emergence’ is often used in a very informal way in the so called ‘emergent’ computation, without clear explanations and/or definitions. In this paper, we discuss in some detail the meaning of the theoretical terms ‘emergence’ and ‘emergent’, showing how such an analysis can lead to improvements of the algorithm proposed.

The Secondness of the Fourth Gospel

This article presents a reading of the Fourth Gospel based on the principles of C. S. Peirce's semiotics. The Johannine Jesus functions as a sign of God. On the basis of an interpretation of the Peircean sign definition and its phenomenological, semiotic and pragmatic aspects, the sign of Jesus can be defined more precisely as a dicent indexical sin sign, i.e. a sign with secondness in all relations. It is fundamental to Peirce's sign theory that a sign has genuine triadic relations to the object and the interpretant. This leads to a new understanding of the coherence of Johannine theology, Christology, eschatology, ecclesiology and ethics. Jesus initiates a semiotic process which includes the believing community in his relation to God. As a consequence, the believers assume a conduct that corresponds to the crucified one.

Triadic relations and emergence of mind in nonhuman primates

When considering the evolutionary origin of language, we should attend to the social-cognitive aspects of language acquisition in addition to the linguistic competence. This view is an emphasis of Bruner's “Language Acquisition Supporting System (LASS)” and recently intensively studied from the comparative-cognitive-developmental perspective. In this article, I summarize the research project of cognitive development in chimpanzees at the Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University (CDC2000), with special reference to the development of social cognition. During the early infancy, chimpanzee infants showed developmental trajectories similar to human infants. Especially, the chimpanzee infants established close dyadic relationship with their mothers on the basis of mutual gaze and social smiling. However, triadic interactions on the basis of sharing attention, more important social interactions for humans, were not observed in chimpanzees even at their juvenile period. This difference in social interactions between humans and chimpanzees may be the source of more critical difference in the understanding of others. Furthermore, the problem of “enculturation” is also discussed in relation to Vygotsky's concept of “zone of proximal development”.

Geborgte Narrative: Wie sich türkische Einwanderer an den Juden in Deutschland orientieren

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Solidarity and Fear: Hegel and Sartre on the Mediations of Reciprocity

In Sartre's late work, the Critique of Dialectical Reason, he shares with Hegel an interest in comprehending the sphere of human freedom in a concrete social and political context, where reciprocity is a guiding ideal for freedom and self-understanding, and where there is a dialectically intelligible progression from the isolated individual to a more common, integrated individual who participates in various forms of social union and feels the bonds of solidarity.1 In what follows, I am interested in the accounts Hegel and Sartre give regarding the lived experience of reciprocity a person has when involved in a group, and so also the meaning of the bonds of solidarity in that context, especially the sense in which fear can be understood as the obverse of solidarity.' Sartre argues that his view of reciprocity and solidarity is more concretely mediated than Hegel's and that only his view effectively avoids organicism, but I will argue that Hegel can respond to these criticisms. I do think that Sartre has much to offer and that his work in the Critique addresses and develops some features of reciprocity and solidarity that Hegel does not consider directly, but in my view the arguments of the Critique are ones that lead us towards a constructive development of Hegel's thought instead of an abandonment of it. Specifically, Sartre's theory puts pressure on Hegel's account to explain how the structures of group involvement are genuinely internal to the group, how the situated comprehension of the bonds of solidarity guides individual action, and how one experiences being an individual and a group member at the same time. In light of what I will try to show here, I think it is worth stressing at the outset a few basic philosophical concerns that Hegel and Sartre (of the Critique) share. First, and most generally, both thinkers consistently want to push the terms of explanation and account-giving from the partial and abstract to the complete and concrete. Both Hegel and Sartre are critical of any account which makes reference solely to the individual, in which values and meanings become narrow, impoverished and self-referential; they are both interested in comprehending human action in terms of history, as historical action, action which stretches out through increasingly broad matrices of relations. Though I will comment on a fundamental difference between Hegel's rationality and Sartre's intelligibility, I want to note preliminarily that these two notions are both driven by the urge to capture the structure and relations of what goes on in human life: both are after a kind of comprehension that renders such basic features of life transparent. Both Hegel and Sartre also develop their views from a basic distinction between analytical and dialectical reason. In their view, analytical reason presupposes ontological and methodological atomism, external relations, and the independence of the knowing subject, whereas dialectical reason attempts to capture internal relations, insists that what can be known is a complex and changing whole, and always presupposes the dependence of the knower on the thing known. But both would also argue that analytical reason is a moment of dialectical reason, and so is not to be flatly rejected; there are many more limited contexts in which analytical reason is the appropriate perspective with which to confront an issue. Finally, both Hegel and Sartre try to develop models of positive reciprocity and grant such an account a foundational place in their social theories. In pointing out these similarities, I do not mean to minimize genuine differences, e.g., Sartre's intense awareness of contingency, development of triadic relations, or attention to the nature and dynamics of groups, or alternatively, Hegel's endorsement of the state, or his attempt to develop a system of thought at a level more general than history; I mean to suggest that their views converge more than Sartre was willing to admit, and that we will miss out on the possibility of exploring how their views complement each other if we take Sartre at his word, or if we think that his social theory rules out from the start everything Hegel needs to develop his vision. …