The Catalyzing Mind: Beyond Models of Causality (Annals of Theoretical Psychology)
Abstract
How do we understand and explain phenomena in psychology? What does the concept of “causality” mean when we discuss higher psychological functions and behavior? Is it possible to generate “laws” in a psychological and behavioral science―laws that go beyond statistical regularities, frequencies, and probabilities? An international group of authors compare and contrast the use of a causal model in psychology with a newer model―the catalytic model. The Catalyzing Mind: Beyond Models of Causality proposes an approach to the qualitative nature of psychological phenomena that focuses on the psychological significance and meaning of conditions, contexts, and situations as well as their sign-mediating processes. Contributors develop, apply, and criticize the notion of a catalyzing mind in hopes of achieving conceptual clarity and rigor. Disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, semiotics and biosemiotics are used for an interdisciplinary approach to the book. Research topics such as history and national identity, immigration, and transitions to adulthood are all brought into a dialogue with the concept of the catalyzing mind. With a variety of disciplines, theoretical concepts, and research topics this book is a collective effort at an approach to move beyond models of causality for explaining and understanding psychological phenomena.
... 3. For related approaches, see Andersson and Törnberg (2019), Cabell and Valsiner (2013), and Muthukrishna, Doebeli, Chudek, and Henrich (2018). 4. ...
Autocatalytic networks have been used to model the emergence of self-organizing structure capable of sustaining life and undergoing biological evolution. Here, we model the emergence of cognitive structure capable of undergoing cultural evolution. Mental representations (MRs) of knowledge and experiences play the role of catalytic molecules, and interactions among them (e.g., the forging of new associations) play the role of reactions and result in representational redescription. The approach tags MRs with their source, that is, whether they were acquired through social learning, individual learning (of pre-existing information), or creative thought (resulting in the generation of new information). This makes it possible to model how cognitive structure emerges and to trace lineages of cumulative culture step by step. We develop a formal representation of the cultural transition from Oldowan to Acheulean tool technology using Reflexively Autocatalytic and Food set generated (RAF) networks. Unlike more primitive Oldowan stone tools, the Acheulean hand axe required not only the capacity to envision and bring into being something that did not yet exist, but hierarchically structured thought and action, and the generation of new MRs: the concepts EDGING, THINNING, SHAPING, and a meta-concept, HAND AXE. We show how this constituted a key transition toward the emergence of semantic networks that were self-organizing, self-sustaining, and autocatalytic, and we discuss how such networks replicated through social interaction. The model provides a promising approach to unraveling one of the greatest anthropological mysteries: that of why development of the Acheulean hand axe was followed by over a million years of cultural stasis.
... The rationale for treating MRs as catalysts comes from the literature on concept combination, which provides extensive evidence that when concepts act as contexts for 3 For related approaches, see (Andersson & Törnberg, 2019;Cabell & Valsiner, 2013;Muthukrishna, Doebeli, Chudek, & Henrich, 2018). ...
Autocatalytic networks have been used to model the emergence of self-organizing structure capable of sustaining life and undergoing biological evolution. Here, we model the emergence of cognitive structure capable of undergoing cultural evolution. Mental representations of knowledge and experiences play the role of catalytic molecules, and interactions amongst them (e.g., the forging of new associations) play the role of reactions, and result in representational redescription. The approach tags mental representations with their source, i.e., whether they were acquired through social learning, individual learning (of pre-existing information), or creative thought (resulting in the generation of new information). This makes it possible to model how cognitive structure emerges, and to trace lineages of cumulative culture step by step. We develop a formal representation of the cultural transition from Oldowan to Acheulean tool technology using Reflexively Autocatalytifc and Food set generated (RAF) networks. Unlike more primitive Oldowan stone tools, the Acheulean hand axe required not only the capacity to envision and bring into being something that did not yet exist, but hierarchically structured thought and action, and the generation of new mental representations: the concepts EDGING, THINNING, SHAPING, and a meta-concept, HAND AXE. We show how this constituted a key transition towards the emergence of semantic networks that were self-organizing, self-sustaining, and autocatalytic, and discuss how such networks replicated through social interaction. The model provides a promising approach to unraveling one of the greatest anthropological mysteries: that of why development of the Acheulean hand axe was followed by over a million years of cultural stasis.
... Psychology has been traditionally focusing on the discovery of causal relations. Instead, in the framework that emphasizes pre-adaptation to future, it is the catalytic conditions (Cabell and Valsiner, 2014) that constitute the fitting conceptual framework for analysis Figure 13) that makes the person prepared in general to face future concrete situations where the given meaning system (encoded into fieldlike signs of infinite borders—but therefore of total " take-over " of the human mind) may become applicable. This would equal " sense category " in Mammen's terms— which guides the operation of the " choice " categories. ...
Psychology of human being is the science of goals-oriented actions that transcend the border of the present, and incorporate the past and the future in the process of development (" The Yokohama Manifesto "-Valsiner, Marsico, Chaudhary, Sato and Dazzani, 2016). Semiotic mediating devices—signs of various forms that operate in dynamic configurations catalyze the processes of human acting, feeling, and thinking. The border of past and future forms a triple Gegenstand. The triplicate (goal-oriented action, resistance to the action, and reflection upon action) sets up the human condition within which higher psychological functions relate with their lower counterparts through forward-oriented semiosis—making signs, creating sign configurations, and setting up catalytic conditions for the future. The basic structural forms of these relations set up a new theoretical agenda for the science of psychology, maintaining the focus on human subjective self-reflection (the psyche) in its social contexts as the arena for investigation. Focusing on this arena makes it possible for psychology to avoid reduction of its phenomena either to neuroscientific or sociological empirical practices, while benefitting from the theoretical innovations in these adjacent sciences. Psychology as science has always been theoretically myopic. Over the past three centuries it has emerged onto the battlefield of the natural (Naturwissenschaften) and soul sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), taking sides, dismissing opponents on ideological grounds, and—getting rid of psychology's own phenomena. The psyche—a somewhat mysterious construction of human subjectivity by psychologists' subjective perspectives-has been reduced downwards (to behavioral, physiological, or even genetic " causes ") or upwards (treating persons as " texts " in the social domain). The result of both directions of reduction is the same—denial of the intentional nature of human subjectivity, and with it—denial of the focus on development. The latter denial would keep the whole discipline within the confines of the ontological straightjacket set up in European thought by the traditions of Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant. The reduction of the dynamic—feeling, striving, and self-reflecting-psyche to categorical classifications in the mind risks the loss of understanding the basic processes of human ways of being.
... Psychology has been traditionally focusing on the discovery of causal relations. Instead, in the framework that emphasizes pre-adaptation to future, it is the catalytic conditions (Cabell and Valsiner, 2014) that constitute the fitting conceptual framework for analysis Figure 13) that makes the person prepared in general to face future concrete situations where the given meaning system (encoded into fieldlike signs of infinite borders—but therefore of total " take-over " of the human mind) may become applicable. This would equal " sense category " in Mammen's terms— which guides the operation of the " choice " categories. ...
Scaffolding is a notion that allows us to conceptualize direction towards change. As a form of guidance, scaffolding may result in both change and non-change. In this paper I apply the notion of scaffolding by signs (semiotic mediation) to the theory of Dialogical Self (DS). The DS is a construct that brings into psychology a new way of theoretical thought—thinking in dualities. Dualities are systemic units of two opposites that are mutually related by functional dynamic relations. Within the theory of DS, human psychological functioning is explained by transformations of constantly changed I-positions that are mapped both structurally (internal/external) and temporally (past/present/future). Semiotic mediation within the DS guarantees the person's psychological distancing from the here-and-now setting. This distancing is guided by promoter signs—generalized meanings of field-like form that orient the self's transformation. These signs are parts of the semiotic mediating processes where higher-level signs guide the range of openness of the sign hierarchy itself for further transformation when that is needed.
Natural selection successfully explains how organisms accumulate adaptive change despite that traits acquired over a lifetime are eliminated at the end of each generation. However, in some domains that exhibit cumulative, adaptive change—e.g. cultural evolution, and earliest life—acquired traits are retained; these domains do not face the problem that Darwin’s theory was designed to solve. Lack of transmission of acquired traits occurs when germ cells are protected from environmental change, due to a self-assembly code used in two distinct ways: (i) actively interpreted during development to generate a soma, and (ii) passively copied without interpretation during reproduction to generate germ cells. Early life and cultural evolution appear not to involve a self-assembly code used in these two ways. We suggest that cumulative, adaptive change in these domains is due to a lower-fidelity evolutionary process, and model it using reflexively autocatalytic and foodset-generated networks. We refer to this more primitive evolutionary process as self–other reorganization (SOR) because it involves internal self-organizing and self-maintaining processes within entities, as well as interaction between entities. SOR encompasses learning but in general operates across groups. We discuss the relationship between SOR and Lamarckism, and illustrate a special case of SOR without variation.
The author revisits neuropsychiatrist Kurt Goldstein’s (1934/1995, 1963) concept of self-actualization. It is argued that the interdisciplinary field of biosemiotics (Emmeche & Kull, 2011; Hoffmeyer, 2003/2009) provides contemporary language and examples to understand Goldstein’s concept, and expands the breadth of its application to include all living things (not only humans). The introduction to biosemiotics also provides an opportunity for humanistic psychology to form a meaningful collaboration with the naturalistic sciences. Self-actualization is defined through 3 important aspects. The first is that of individuation or the process of becoming a self. The second is that of holism, or the recognition that the organism and environment comprise a meaningful whole. Finally, the third is that self-actualization is the only motivating drive. With the expansion of application that a biosemiotic view provides, it is maintained that all life is governed by biosemiosis.
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