Dynamical Systems

Contemporary complexity theory has been instrumental in providing novel rigorous definitions for some classic philosophical concepts, including emergence. In an attempt to provide an account of emergence that is consistent with complexity and dynamical systems theory, several authors have turned to the notion of constraints on state transitions. Drawing on complexity theory directly, this paper builds on those accounts, further developing the constraint-based interpretation of emergence and arguing that such accounts recover many of the features of more traditional accounts. We (...) show that the constraint-based account of emergence also leads naturally into a meaningful definition of self-organization, another concept that has received increasing attention recently. Along the way, we distinguish between order and organization, two concepts which are frequently conflated. Finally, we consider possibilities for future research in the philosophy of complex systems, as well as applications of the distinctions made in this paper. (shrink)

Without a proper restriction on mappings, virtually any system could be seen as implementing any computation. That would not allow characterization of systems in terms of implemented computations and is not compatible with a computationalist philosophy of mind. Information-based criteria for independence of substates within structured states are proposed as a solution. Objections to the use of requirements for transitions in counterfactual states are addressed, in part using the partial-brain argument as a general counterargument to neural replacement arguments.

This article is a response to the position of Landgrebe and Smith on the fundamental limitations that prevent the creation of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), expressed in their book Why Machines Will Never Rule the World. The reasons for failures for attempts to create AGI using formal logic and algorithmic approaches to modeling intelligence are discussed. An attempt is made to define the future direction of intellectual systems development as hybrid evolving systems, as well as a revision of the Turing (...) test statement and language models role. (shrink)

When reasoning about dependence relations, philosophers often rely on gradualist assumptions, according to which abrupt changes in a phenomenon of interest can result only from abrupt changes in the low-level phenomena on which it depends. These assumptions, while strictly correct if the dependence relation in question can be expressed by continuous dynamical equations, should be handled with care: very often the descriptively relevant property of a dynamical system connecting high- and low-level phenomena is not its instantaneous behaviour but its stable (...) fixed points (those in the vicinity of which it spends most of the time, after comparatively short transitory periods), and stable fixed points can change abruptly as a result of infinitesimal changes of the low-level phenomenon. We illustrate this potential gradualist trap by showing that Chalmers’ fading qualia argument falls into it. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to compile a selection of the various formalisms found in conversation theory to introduce readers to Pask's discursive algebra. In this way, the text demonstrates how concept sharing and concept formation by means of the interaction of two participants may be formalized. The approach taken in this study is to examine the formal notation system used by Pask and demonstrate how such formalisms may be used to represent concept sharing and concept formation through conversation. (...) The compilation of the discursive algebra using the framework provided by conversation theory could potentially be used as an auxiliary framework to study conversational interactions in multi-agent systems theory. (shrink)

The purpose of the following text is to give readers a general introduction to Gordon Pask’s conversation theory, which is considered here to be a cybernetic and epistemological account of concept-forming and concept-sharing through conversational discourse and practice. While Pask devoted three lengthy tomes to articulate the theory and its applications, I believe it is necessary to give readers who are interested in conversation theory a general introduction to what I believe are the key features of his work in this (...) area. I argue that conversation theory should be considered an inferential account of the theory of concepts rather than a representational account, by virtue of Pask’s argument that a concept must be a process that involves many other concepts. (shrink)

Upon Brexit & Trade War, the research took a supply-side analysis in macroeconomic paradigm for the purpose and cause of the actions. In the geopolitical competitions on crude oil resources between the allied powers & the Russian hegemony, the latter of which has effective control over P. R. China’s multilateral behaviors, the external research induced that trade war, either by complete information in intelligence or an unintended result, was a supply chain attack in prohibiting the antisatellite weapon supplies in the (...) Northern regions of mainland China in relation to Russia. Although no substantive change to international relations, the Trade War’s prohibitive effect on the high frequency trading in the monetary domain of CNY was observed, which had been the source of economic bubbles in the import-export control regime with centralized banking. The paper argues that by realism in economy & military strategy, trade war was ineffective in deterring the covert operations of the People’s Liberation Army by their territorial strategies and raises questions in humanitarianism in conflict situations. Moreover, with gross privacy breaches by mass surveillance in domain politics, totalitarianism with coercions, and counterfeit of drone strikes, traditional methods of threat elimination are rendered less pragmatic apart from the adversaries’ cyber security breaches. With the scientific approach, I offer an ecological paradigm with historic analysis of the Chinese military’s conducts in terms economics. The territorial methods of the PLA are contextualized into the ecological paradigm in regionalism & public administration. Electronic combats of the Chinese regime with the Great Firewall and Denial-of-Service attacks not only contribute to the diminishing natural freedoms of the population, but also transgress the fundamental right to health along with non-traditional nuclear threats to P.R.C. itself. (shrink)

Whether it was John Searle’s Chinese Room argument (Searle, 1980) or Roger Penrose’s argument of the non-computable nature of a mathematician’s insight – an argument that was based on Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem (Penrose, 1989), we have always had skeptics that questioned the possibility of realizing strong Artificial Intelligence (AI), or what has become known by Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). But this new book by Landgrebe and Smith (henceforth, L&S) is perhaps the strongest argument ever made against strong AI. It is (...) a very extensive review of what building a mind essentially amounts to drawing on insights and results from biology, physics, linguistics, computability, philosophy, and mathematics. (shrink)

A new layer of complexity, constituted of networks of information token recurrence, has been identified in socio-technical systems such as the Wikipedia online community and the Zooniverse citizen science platform. The identification of this complexity reveals that our current understanding of the actual structure of those systems, and consequently the structure of the entire World Wide Web, is incomplete, which raises novel questions for data science research but also from the perspective of social epistemology. Here we establish the principled foundations (...) and practical advantages of analyzing information diffusion within and across Web systems with Transcendental Information Cascades, and outline resulting directions for future study in the area of socio-technical systems. We also suggest that Transcendental Information Cascades may be applicable to any kind of time-evolving system that can be observed using digital technologies, and that the structures found in such systems comprise properties common to all naturally occurring complex systems. (shrink)

Traditionally, computational theory (CT) and dynamical systems theory (DST) have presented themselves as opposed and incompatible paradigms in cognitive science. There have been some efforts to reconcile these paradigms, mainly, by assimilating DST to CT at the expenses of its anti-representationalist commitments. In this paper, building on Piccinini’s mechanistic account of computation and the notion of functional closure, we explore an alternative conciliatory strategy. We try to assimilate CT to DST by dropping its representationalist commitments, and by inviting CT to (...) recognize the functionally closed nature of some computational systems. (shrink)

I examine two explanatory models of choking: the representationalist model and the anti-representationalist model. The representationalist model is based largely on Anderson's ACT model of procedural knowledge and is developed by Masters, Beilock and Carr. The antirepresentationalist model is based on dynamical models of cognition and embodied action and is developed by Dreyfus who employs an antirepresentational view of know-how. I identify the models' similarities and differences. I then suggest that Dreyfus is wrong to believe representational activity requires reflection and (...) attention. I also argue that the representationalist model of choking is preferable, since some embodied actions require appeals to representations, something not available to Dreyfus's anti-representational model. (shrink)

In this small book logician and mathematician Jens Erik Fenstad addresses some of the most important foundational questions of linguistics: What should a theory of meaning look like and how might we provide the missing link between meaning theory and our knowledge of how the brain works? The author’s answer is twofold. On the one hand, he suggests that logical semantics in the Montague tradition and other broadly conceived symbolic approaches do not suffice. On the other hand, he does not (...) argue that the logical approach should be discarded; instead, he opts for a methodological pluralism in which symbolic approaches to meaning are combined with geo- metric ones such as Conceptual Spaces [9] and discusses ways in which these geometric accounts could be hooked up with connectionist frameworks and dynamic systems approaches in neurophysiology. (shrink)

From his earliest work forward, phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty attempted to develop a new ontology of nature that would avoid the antinomies of realism and idealism by showing that nature has its own intrinsic sense which is prior to reflection. The key to this new ontology was the concept of form, which he appropriated from Gestalt psychology. However, Merleau-Ponty struggled to give a positive characterization of the phenomenon of form which would clarify its ontological status. Evan Thompson has recently taken up (...) Merleau-Ponty’s ontology as the basis for a new, “enactive” approach to cognitive science, synthesizing it with concepts from dynamic systems theory and Francisco Varela’s theory of autopoiesis. However, Thompson does not quite succeed in resolving the ambiguities in Merleau-Ponty’s account of form. This article builds on an indication from Thompson in order to propose a new account of form as asymmetry, and of the genesis of form in nature as symmetry-breaking. These concepts help us to escape the antinomies of Modern thought by showing how nature is the autoproduction of a sense which can only be known by an embodied perceiver. (shrink)

Since the early eighties, computationalism in the study of the mind has been “under attack” by several critics of the so-called “classic” or “symbolic” approaches in AI and cognitive science. Computationalism was generically identified with such approaches. For example, it was identified with both Allen Newell and Herbert Simon’s Physical Symbol System Hypothesis and Jerry Fodor’s theory of Language of Thought, usually without taking into account the fact ,that such approaches are very different as to their methods and aims. Zenon (...) Pylyshyn, in his influential book Computation and Cognition, claimed that both Newell and Fodor deeply influenced his ideas on cognition as computation. This probably added to the confusion, as many people still consider Pylyshyn’s book as paradigmatic of the computational approach in the study of the mind. Since then, cognitive scientists, AI researchers and also philosophers of the mind have been asked to take sides on different “paradigms” that have from time to time been proposed as opponents of (classic or symbolic) computationalism. Examples of such oppositions are: -/- computationalism vs. connectionism, computationalism vs. dynamical systems, computationalism vs. situated and embodied cognition, computationalism vs. behavioural and evolutionary robotics. -/- Our preliminary claim in section 1 is that computationalism should not be identified with what we would call the “paradigm (based on the metaphor) of the computer” (in the following, PoC). PoC is the (rather vague) statement that the mind functions “as a digital computer”. Actually, PoC is a restrictive version of computationalism, and nobody ever seriously upheld it, except in some rough versions of the computational approach and in some popular discussions about it. Usually, PoC is used as a straw man in many arguments against computationalism. In section 1 we look in some detail at PoC’s claims and argue that computationalism cannot be identified with PoC. In section 2 we point out that certain anticomputationalist arguments are based on this misleading identification. In section 3 we suggest that the view of the levels of explanation proposed by David Marr could clarify certain points of the debate on computationalism. In section 4 we touch on a controversial issue, namely the possibility of developing a notion of analog computation, similar to the notion of digital computation. A short conclusion follows in section 5. (shrink)

لقد صار من غير الممكن أبدا نفي الضرورة الملحة لدراسة التحولات الاجتماعية والديناميات المجالية التي يعرفها المجتمع المغربي المعاصر. فقد عرف المغرب الظاهرة الكولونيالية، كما انخرط في الحداثة التقنية والتنظيمية، مثلما اندمج في سوق الاقتصاد العالمي، ونظام العولمة بتحدياته المختلفة. كما دخل هذا المجتمع في عصر سمته الأساسية هي الحركية، سواء كانت هذه الحركية أفقية داخل المجال، أو حركية عمودية في السلم الاجتماعي، وفي مختلف مناحي الحياة الاجتماعية والثقافية. -/- وبسبب هذا الوضع، كان على الدراسات الاجتماعية، أن تواكب الواضعة الراهنة (...) للمجتمع، بتكثيف وتجديد مقارباتها، حتى تكون قادرة على فهم وتحليل مختلف الظواهر التي يطفح بها المشهد الاجتماعي المغربي، بمختلف مكوناته ومجالاته المختلفة، سواء في مجال القرى والواحات، أو في مجالات المدن وأحوازها. وإذ نؤكد هذا المعطى الذي لا يمكن أن تغفله العين السوسيولوجية، فإن هدفنا من خلال هذا العمل هو محاولة دراسة وتحليل المجتمع المغربي في قلب التحولات، لهذا تلامس المقالات المدرجة ضمن هذا العمل مجالات وجوانب عديدة من عمليات التحول التي يشهدها المجتمع المغربي، بمقاربات وطرائق مختلفة ومتقاطعة في آن واحد. وسيجد القارئ أن العنوان الذي اخترناه لهذا العمل يعبر إلى حد بعيد عن طبيعة مسعانا. فرؤيتنا هذه نابعة من قناعتنا الراسخة بأهمية المعرفة والبحث العلمي المتكامل، خاصة إذا تعلق الأمر بموضوع الديناميات والتحولات المختلفة التي لا يمكن الإمساك بها إلا من زاوية التعدد والتكامل المعرفي، على الرغم من التحديات والثغرات التي قد تواجه مثل هذا الطموح. -/- توجه هذا العمل تساؤلات كثيرة تستدعي نفسها، من قبيل: هل انتهت الفلاحة العائلية بالمجالات الرطبة؟ وما الذي تبقى من السكن التقليدي بالواحات؟ وما هي مختلف الديناميات التي شهدها المجتمع القروي المغربي؟ وإلى أي حد ساهم الاستعمار كلحظة "مثاقفة كبيرة" وكل عمليات التحديث وسياسات التنمية الوطنية مند الاستقلال، في تغيير البنيات الفكرية والقيّم الثقافية للمجتمع المغربي التقليدي؟ وهل ساهمت المدرسة في الحدّ من التراتبية الاجتماعية القائمة على التمييز الجنسي والاثني؟ وكيف أثرت هذه الديناميات على علاقة الفرد المغربي بالمجال والجسد وتراثه الأنثروبولوجي المتنوع؟ وهل يمكن القول بأن المجتمع المغربي يتجه أكثر فأكثر نحو قيم السوق والفردانية؟ -/- بناء على هذه الأسئلة وغيرها، تتنوع أعمال هذا الكتاب، بين الاهتمام بالفلاحة العائلية(د، بن محمد قسطاني)، وتحولات المجتمع القروي(الباحث: الصديق الصادقي العماري) الذي ساهمت فيه عوامل كثيرة، كالاستعمار والمدرسة التي سرعت وتيرة التغير على مستوى الحركية الاجتماعية للفئات التي كانت تنتمي إلى القاع الاجتماعي قبل الاستعمار(ذ، عبد الكريم الوزيري)، كما أن الديناميات السوسيو-مجالية لهاته المناطق، خاصة بمجال الواحات(د، محمد جاج)، إلى جانب الهجرة الداخلية والخارجية، وانفتاح المجتمعات المحلية على القيّم الحديثة، غيرت بشكل كبير نمط السكن التقليدي وأزاحته من موقعه(د عبد الفتاح الزهيدي)، كما لعبت دورًا كبيرا في التأثير على الأدوار الاجتماعية والممارسات الثقافية والرمزية المرتبطة بالجسد وتحولاته التي امتدت إلى الأنثى بالمجالات الواحية(د، ابراهيم حمداوي). -/- وقد حاول الباحث (محمد كركوب) من جهته، الوقوف عند التحولات التي شهدتها قيّم الزواج ومؤسسة الأسرة داخل المجتمع، أما الأستاذ (عبد القادر محمدي) فقد تناول أنثروبولوجيًا طقوس الليلة الكناوية وبعض ما شهدته من تحولات، كما حاول الباحث (عبد العزيز اجدي) تتبع بعض التحولات القيمية التي شهدتها ثقافة المجتمع المغربي، و من ضمنها ما ركز عليه الباحث (صلح نديم) بخصوص التحولات التي طالت الرصيد اللغوي للطفل. وإلى جانب هذه الديناميات، فإن المغرب لم يعد فقط، بلدا مصدرا للهجرة، أو محطة عبور فحسب، بل صار بلدا حاضنا للمهاجرين الأفارقة بشكل خاص، الأمر الذي طرح أمامه مجموعة من التحديات الاجتماعية والثقافية، من ذلك مثلا، تلك التحديات المتعلقة بسياسة إدماجهم داخل المجتمع وسوق الشغل، وهو ما تقصاه الباحث (عبد الله أزرار). إن هذه التغيرات والديناميات التي شهدها المجتمع المغربي على مستوى بنيات تفكيره ومؤسساته وروابطه، مند الاستعمار، لم يصحبه بالضرورة اختفاء الأطر الفكرية والمؤسسات التقليدية التي كانت تحكم المجتمع، لذلك لم يتأسس الرابط السياسي والمدني، بشكل يمكننا الحديث عن مجتمع حديث بالمعنى السوسيولوجي للكلمة. فالإجراءات التي أحدثها الاستعمار ثم الدولة الوطنية، إلى جانب التحضر النسبي للبنيات التحتية في المدن القديمة والناشئة على حد سواء، على الرغم من أنها عملت بالتدريج على تفكيك البنية القبلية وخلخلة البناء الاجتماعي التقليدي، بإدماج المجتمع القبلي في المؤسسات الجديدة عبر عمليات بناء الدولة وتبني نظم التحديث والتنمية التي اتخذت أشكالا سياسية واقتصادية واجتماعية متنوعة، إلا أن الباحث (رشيد الزعفران) قد سجل ضعف وهشاشة الرابط المدني والسياسي، في مقابل استمرار حضور الرابط الأسري الذي حافظ على قوته. -/- إننا، إذ نقدم هذا العمل لعموم الطلبة والأساتذة والباحثين، فإنه يسعدنا أن نتوجه بالشكر الجزيل لكل المشاركين من الأساتذة والباحثين، وكل أعضاء اللجنة العلمية الذين عملوا على مراجعة المقالات وتحكيمها. ولابد من الإشارة هنا إلى أن ترتيب المقالات ليس له أي علاقة بمكانة الباحث، بل يتعلق الأمر بالتوزيع الموضوعاتي للأعمال بما يتماشى وتنظيم أقسام وفصول هذا العمل، الذي نرجو أن يشكل إضافة نوعية للمكتبة المغربية. لجنة التنسيق: الصديق الصادقي العماري رشيد الزعفران. (shrink)

Years ago, when I was an undergraduate math major at the University of Wyoming, I came across an interesting book in our library. It was a book of counterexamples t o propositions in real analysis (the mathematics of the real numbers). Mathematicians work more or less like the rest of us. They consider propositions. If one seems to them to be plausibly true, then they set about to prove it, to establish the proposition as a theorem. Instead o f setting (...) out to prove propositions, the psychologists, neuroscientists, and other empirical types among us, set out to show that a proposition is supported by the data, and that it is the best such proposition so supported. The philosophers among us, when they are not causing trouble by arguing that AI is a dead end or that cognitive science can get along without representations, work pretty much like the mathematicians: we set out to prove certain propositions true on the basis of logic, first principles, plausible assumptions, and others' data. But, back to the book of real analysis counterexamples. If some mathematician happened t o think that some proposition about continuity, say, was plausibly true, he or she would then set out to prove it. If the proposition was in fact not a theorem, then a lot of precious time would be wasted trying to prove it. Wouldn't it be great to have a book that listed plausibly true propositions that were in fact not true, and listed with each such proposition a counterexample to it? Of course it would. (shrink)

The Gestalt psychologists adopted a set of positions on mind-body issues that seem like an odd mix. They sought to combine a version of naturalism and physiological reductionism with an insistence on the reality of the phenomenal and the attribution of meanings to objects as natural characteristics. After reviewing basic positions in contemporary philosophy of mind, we examine the Gestalt position, characterizing it m terms of phenomenal realism and programmatic reductionism. We then distinguish Gestalt philosophy of mind from instrumentalism and (...) computational functionalism, and examine Gestalt attributions of meaning and value to perceived objects. Finally, we consider a metatheoretical moral from Gestalt theory, which commends the search for commensurate description of mental phenomena and their physiological counterparts. (shrink)

This work addresses a broad range of questions which belong to four fields: computation theory, general philosophy of science, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. Dynamical system theory provides the framework for a unified treatment of these questions. ;The main goal of this dissertation is to propose a new view of the aims and methods of cognitive science--the dynamical approach . According to this view, the object of cognitive science is a particular set of dynamical systems, which I (...) call "cognitive systems". The goal of a cognitive study is to specify a dynamical model of a cognitive system, and then use this model to produce a detailed account of the specific cognitive abilities of that system. The dynamical approach does not limit a-priori the form of the dynamical models which cognitive science may consider. In particular, this approach is compatible with both computational and connectionist modeling, for both computational systems and connectionist networks are special types of dynamical systems. ;To substantiate these methodological claims about cognitive science, I deal first with two questions in two different fields: What is a computational system? What is a dynamical explanation of a deterministic process? ;Intuitively, a computational system is a deterministic system which evolves in discrete time steps, and which can be described in an effective way. In chapter 1, I give a formal definition of this concept which employs the notions of isomorphism between dynamical systems, and of Turing computable function. In chapter 2, I propose a more comprehensive analysis which is based on a natural generalization of the concept of Turing machine. ;The goal of chapter 3 is to develop a theory of the dynamical explanation of a deterministic process. By a "dynamical explanation" I mean the specification of a dynamical model of the system or process which we want to explain. I start from the analysis of a specific type of explanandum--dynamical phenomena--and I then use this analysis to shed light on the general form of a dynamical explanation. Finally, I analyze the structure of those theories which generate explanations of this form, namely dynamical theories. (shrink)

Ken Forbus's Qualitative Process Theory (QPT) is a popular theory for reasoning about the physical aspects of the daily world. Qualitative Process Theory Using Linguistic Variables by Bruce D'Ambrosio (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1989) is an attempt to fill some gaps in QPT.

I explore the possibility that mentality can be characterized as a level in between the functional and the neurological, namely as a physical system exhibiting a specific kind of chaos. The argument is meant to make a case for this kind of characterization rather than giving one in specific detail.