Haci-Halil Uslucan
Department of Psychology (Developmental and Educational Psychology)
Otto-von-Guericke University
Magdeburg / Germany
Abstract
The philosophy of the classical American pragmatism represents one of the basic challenges to the conception of self and reason in the history of philosophical and psychological thinking. As the founder of pragmatism, Peirce is well known for his attempt to overcome the Cartesian tradition of philosophy, which was founded on the paradigm of monologic self-consciousness and self-awareness. The dialogical principle is a core piece of the Peircean semiotics, which has deep implications to subjectivity, meaning-construction, reasoning on the "self," and communication. The reinterpretation of the classic tradition of thinking on signs leads Peirce to a triadic and dynamic-dialogical conception of signs. For Peirce, a sign is as such because it stands for something to somebody. It creates in the mind of the person an equivalent or a more developed sign. This radical conception of semiotics terminated in the idea of Òman as a signÓ and the claim that Òmen and words reciprocally educate each other.Ó The self is an interpreting subject and an interpreted object. In its innermost being, the self is a communicative agent. The epistemological consequence of this conception is: Truth is closely related to intersubjectivity and the private is synonymous with erroneous.
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Grounding Signs of Culture:
Primary Intersubjectivity in Social Semiosis
Stephen J. Cowley, Sheshni Moodley & Agnese Fiori-Cowley
University of Bradford, UK &
University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, Durban, South Africa
Abstract
The paper examines how infants are first permeated by culture. Building on Thibault (1999), semiogenesis is traced to the joint activity of primary intersubjectivity. Using an African example, analysis shows howÑat 14 weeksÑan infant already uses culturally specific indicators of Òwhat a caregiver wants.Ó Human predispositions and the motherÕs enactment of cultural processes enable the child to give joint activity a specific Òsense.Ó Developmentally, the child prods the caregiver to shaping her actions around social norms that transform the infantÕs world. This nascent lop-sided relation is probably necessary for learning to talk. Acting with its mother, the babyÕs full-bodied activity uses adult ÒunderstandingÓ in ways that are cultural, contingent and indexical. Infant activity is already semiotic.
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Tools for Collaboration: Using
and Designing Tools in Interorganizational Economic-Crime Investigation
Anne Puonti
University of Helsinki
and
National Bureau of Investigation, Finland
Abstract
Economic-crime investigation in Finland is in transition from hierarchically organized, sequential collaboration between authorities toward parallel, interorganizational collaboration. This paper describes the tools used and developed for managing the new collaborative economic-crime-investigation process. The challenge is to find interoganizational investigative tools that are flexible enough to shift between vertical use within and horizontal use across organizations. Local construction is often needed in collaborative networks, otherwise the tool never meets the needs of the divergent users. A good tool is sensitive enough to adapt to local settings, and robust enough to be transferable to other contexts. In this paper, I will give empirical examples of how the challenge is met in the economic-crime investigation cases followed during 1999-2002. The findings suggest that the standardization of tools does not take place merely from the top-down, and that something new is emerging: collaborative standardization of local innovations.