The Acquisition of Culturally Patterned Attention Styles under Active Inference

Constant, Axel; Tschantz, Alexander; Millidge, Beren; Criado-Boado, Felipe; Martínez, Luis Miguel Hinojosa; Müller, Johannes; Clark, Andy

doi:10.31234/osf.io/rchaf

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(17 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Friston et al, 2016), which is understood to resolve theoretical and pragmatic questions regarding cognitive representations (Constant et al, 2021), action control (Hipólito, Baltieri, et al, 2021), agency (Clark, 2020), or phenomenology (Ramstead, Hesp, Sandved-Smith, et al, 2021). It does so by offering a multiscale model of how agents engage with their world (Bruineberg & Rietveld, 2014), accounting for the entanglement of embodiment, ecological activity, enculturation, niche construction and phenomenology in the dynamics underlying cognition (Constant et al, 2019(Constant et al, , 2020Nave et al, 2020;Ramstead, Hesp, Sandved-Smith, et al, 2021). It therefore affords a natural model of collective cognition as the participative construction of cognitive landscapes which shape (and are shaped by) the engagement of agents, generating the alignment (or lack thereof) in cultural norms, behavior, etc.…”

Section: -Implementing Agency As Unfolding Cognitive Landscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive agency in sociocultural evolution

GUÉNIN--CARLUT¹

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Models of sociocultural evolution generally study the population dynamics of cultural traits given known biases in social learning. Cognitive agency, understood as the dynamics underlying a specific agent’s adoption of a given trait, is essentially irrelevant in this framework. This article argues that although implementing and instrumenting agency in computational models is fundamentally challenging, it is ultimately possible and would help us overcome major limitations in our understanding of sociocultural dynamics.Indeed, the behaviour of humans is not causally generated by a set of predefined behavioural laws, but by the situated activity of their cognitive architecture. Idealised models of biased transmission certainly help us understand specific features of population dynamics. However, they distract us from the deep intrication of the cognitive and ecological processes underlying sociocultural evolution, and erase their embodied, subjective nature.In line with the earlier “Thinking Through Other Minds” account of sociocultural evolution, this article highlights how the Active Inference framework can help us implement and instrument computational models that address these limitations. Such models would not only help ground our understanding of sociocultural evolution in the underlying cognitive dynamics, but also help solve (or frame) open questions in the study of ritual, relation between cultural transmission and innovation, as well as scales of cultural evolution.

show abstract

Section: -Implementing Agency As Unfolding Cognitive Landscapesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive agency in sociocultural evolution

GUÉNIN--CARLUT¹

2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Clark mostly discusses lingua-form perceptuals that are public, external models of the world (such as language, formula, theories; Lupyan and Clark, 2015 ). Still, such a view can include media, cultural artifacts, and the larger cultural environment to support claims regarding artifact engagements ( Constant et al, 2020a , b ). In the quoted passage, Clark’s focus is on cognition and thought.…”

Section: The Role Of the Brain In The Media MIXmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enacting Media. An Embodied Account of Enculturation Between Neuromediality and New Cognitive Media Theory

Fingerhut

2021

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper argues that the still-emerging paradigm of situated cognition requires a more systematic perspective on media to capture the enculturation of the human mind. By virtue of being media, cultural artifacts present central experiential models of the world for our embodied minds to latch onto. The paper identifies references to external media within embodied, extended, enactive, and predictive approaches to cognition, which remain underdeveloped in terms of the profound impact that media have on our mind. To grasp this impact, I propose an enactive account of media that is based on expansive habits as media-structured, embodied ways of bringing forth meaning and new domains of values. We apply such habits, for instance, when seeing a picture or perceiving a movie. They become established through a process of reciprocal adaptation between media artifacts and organisms and define the range of viable actions within such a media ecology. Within an artifactual habit, we then become attuned to a specific media work (e.g., a TV series, a picture, a text, or even a city) that engages us. Both the plurality of habits and the dynamical adjustments within a habit require a more flexible neural architecture than is addressed by classical cognitive neuroscience. To detail how neural and media processes interlock, I will introduce the concept of neuromediality and discuss radical predictive processing accounts that could contribute to the externalization of the mind by treating media themselves as generative models of the world. After a short primer on general media theory, I discuss media examples in three domains: pictures and moving images; digital media; architecture and the built environment. This discussion demonstrates the need for a new cognitive media theory based on enactive artifactual habits—one that will help us gain perspective on the continuous re-mediation of our mind.

show abstract

“…Poirier et al view legal systems as epistemic systems composed of Markov blankets [79]. Constant et al consider active inference as a mechanism to explain culturally patterned styles of attention [80] (see also [81]).…”

Section: Societal Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part III: Design

Boik

2021

Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change, biodiversity loss, and other major social and environmental problems pose severe risks. Progress has been inadequate and scientists, global policy experts, and the general public increasingly conclude that transformational change is needed across all sectors of society in order to improve and maintain social and ecological wellbeing. At least two paths to transformation are conceivable: (1) reform of and innovation within existing societal systems (e.g., economic, legal, and governance systems); and (2) the de novo development of and migration to new and improved societal systems. This paper is the final in a three-part series of concept papers that together outline a novel science-driven research and development program aimed at the second path. It summarizes literature to build a narrative on the topic of de novo design of societal systems. The purpose is to raise issues, suggest design possibilities, and highlight directions and questions that could be explored in the context of this or any R&D program aimed at new system design. This paper does not present original research, but rather provides a synthesis of selected ideas from the literature. Following other papers in the series, a society is viewed as a superorganism and its societal systems as a cognitive architecture. Accordingly, a central goal of design is to improve the collective cognitive capacity of a society, rendering it more capable of achieving and sustainably maintaining vitality. Topics of attention, communication, self-identity, power, and influence are discussed in relation to societal cognition and system design. A prototypical societal system is described, and some design considerations are highlighted.

show abstract

The Acquisition of Culturally Patterned Attention Styles under Active Inference

Cited by 5 publications

References 15 publications

Cognitive agency in sociocultural evolution

Cognitive agency in sociocultural evolution

Enacting Media. An Embodied Account of Enculturation Between Neuromediality and New Cognitive Media Theory

Science-Driven Societal Transformation, Part III: Design

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About