The field of the philosophy of biology is flourishing in its aim to evaluate and rethink the view inherited from the previous century ---the Modern Synthesis. Different research areas and theories have come to the fore in the last decades in order to account for different biological phenomena that, in the first instance, fall beyond the explanatory scope of the Modern Synthesis. This thesis is anchored and motivated by this revolt in the philosophy of biology. -/- The central target in (...) this context is the possibility of naturalizing teleology, a classical nightmare for the history of biology itself. This requires, principally, understanding the causes of teleological explanations without assuming an unfashioned backward causation of sorts. As the riddles of teleological explanations are about their temporal dimension, I analyze different temporal scales of biological processes: evolutionary, developmental, and physiological. -/- The first one is the one defended in the context of the Modern Synthesis. As expected, one of the aims of this thesis is to evaluate the adequacy of an evolutionary account of teleological explanation. The scrutiny is negative. Evolutionary explanations in the context of the Modern Synthesis lack the necessary causal roots to naturalize teleology. Concerning the physiological scale, a long tradition pushed up by Kant and the organicist movement in the 20th century allows us to better understand how teleological explanations can be naturalized in physiological process. The key notions in this temporal scale are self-organization and the recursive, looped character of physiological process. While the physiological scale may be suitably accounted by contemporaries views, such as Autonomous Systems Theory, different central teleological phenomena remain unexplained from a purely physiological perspective. In particular, different issues concerning the (adaptive) construction of organism ---such as plasticity, robustness, variation, novelty, inheritance--- deserve an ontogenetic analysis. -/- The principal aim of this thesis is to provide a theory of teleological development that falls beyond the Modern Synthesis' framework and is prompted by different insights from the history of biology. I call it Agential Teleosemantics. It rests on two central pillars. First, that developmental processes, beyond any gene-centered stance, can be understood in informational terms; i.e. developmental processes are about the interaction of developmental resources conveying biological information. The second ingredient is agentivity, namely the idea that development is regulated by an agentive system according to the adaptiveness of the phenotypic outcomes produced. The role of agency in Agential Teleosemantic is equivalent to the role of genes in the Modern Synthesis: it is responsible for explaining the order and the adaptive complexity in the living realm. -/- The second target of this thesis regards the possibility of naturalizing intentional explanations in cognitive science. The central project involved in such an aim is known as teleosemantics. Classical teleosemantics however is etiological: it explains the teleofunctions of representational systems in terms of evolutionary processes. The different disputes in the contemporary philosophy of biology provide two insights to analyze teleosemantics in cognitive science. First, the challenges against the Modern Synthesis must be extended to the evolutionary approach of etiological teleosemantics. Second, as Agential Teleosemantics suggests an alternative source for teleofunctions ---ontogeny, I offer an attempt to integrate Agential Teleosemantics into cognitive science in order to provide an alternative teleosemantic project to understand intentional explanations in cognitive science. (shrink)

The definitions and conceptualizations of health, and the management of healthcare have been challenged by the current global scenarios (e.g., new diseases, new geographical distribution of diseases, effects of climate change on health, etc.) and by the ongoing scholarship in humanities and science. In this paper we question the mainstream definition of health adopted by the WHO—‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (WHO in Preamble to the constitution of (...) the World Health Organization as adopted by the international health conference, The World Health Organization, 1948)—and its role in providing tools to understand what health is in the contemporary context. More specifically, we argue that this context requires to take into account the role of the environment both in medical theory and in the healthcare practice. To do so, we analyse WHO documents dated 1984 and 1986 which define health as ‘coping with the environment’. We develop the idea of ‘coping with the environment’, by focusing on two cardinal concepts: adaptation in public health and adaptivity in philosophy of biology. We argue that the notions of adaptation and adaptivity can be of major benefit for the characterization of health, and have practical implications. We explore some of these implications by discussing two recent case studies of adaptivity in public health, which can be valuable to further develop adaptive strategies in the current pandemic scenario: community-centred care and microbiologically healthier buildings. (shrink)

This article delineates the notion of conjectural artworks—that is, ways of thinking and explaining formal and relational phenomena by visual means—and presents an appraisal and review of the use of such visual ways in the work of Chilean biologists and philosophers Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. Particularly, the article focuses on their recurrent uses of Cellular Automaton, that is, discrete, locally interacting, rule-based mathematical models, as conjectural artworks for understanding the concepts of autopoiesis, structural coupling, cognition and enaction: (i.e. Protobio (...) and Bittorio). Additionally, the article proposes a new model of conjectural artwork based on an extension of cellular automaton: random Boolean networks namely, binary systems with variable local connections. Such model, as it is argued, is useful to connect the theoretical frameworks by Maturana and Varela, especially structural coupling and enaction, with other relevant fields such as biosemiotics’ Umwelt-research and cognitive landscapes in neurodynamics, and to advance and explore the concepts of structurally coupled categorization and generalization. (shrink)

In this article, I explore a short history of exchange between cybernetics and aesthetics in Brazil, beginning with the reception of Max Bense’s “new aesthetic” by concrete and neo-concrete poets and artists. I focus on his intellectual exchange with the poet and literary critic Haroldo de Campos, who promoted Bense’s information aesthetics in Brazil throughout the 1960s to tell a little-known history of cybernetic theory wedded to aesthetic practice, demonstrating the role that Brazilian critics, writers and artists played in mediating (...) and deviating from some of the major tenants of first-order cybernetics. Rather than embracing the total “entropy” of meaning that characterized Bense’s “generative aesthetics”, Brazilian poets and artists drew upon cybernetics and information theory to produce artistic works that engaged figuration, bodies, politics, spectatorship and participation. (shrink)

The field of AI ethics during the current and previous decade is receiving an increasing amount of attention from all involved stakeholders: the public, science, philosophy, religious organizations, enterprises, governments, and various organizations. However, this field currently lacks consensus on scope, ethico-philosophical foundations, or common methodology. This thesis aims to contribute towards filling this gap by providing an answer to the two main research questions: first, what theory can explain moral scenarios in which AI entities are participants?; and second, what (...) theory can explain the process of moral reasoning, decision and action, for AI entities in virtual, simulated and real-life moral scenarios? This thesis answers these two research questions with its two main contributions to the field of AI ethics, a substantial and a methodological contribution. The substantial contribution is a coherent and novel theory named Ethics of Systems Framework, as well as a possible inception of a new field of study: ethics of systems. The methodological contribution is the creation of its main methodological tool, the Ethics of Systems Interface. The second part of the research effort was focused on testing and demonstrating the capacities of the Ethics of Systems Framework and Interface in modeling and managing moral scenarios in which AI and other entities participate. Further work can focus on building on top of the foundations of the Framework provided here, increasing the scope of moral theories and simulated scenarios, improving the level of detail and parameters to reflect real-life situations, and field-testing the Framework on actual AI systems. (shrink)

Beginning with a survey of the shortcoming of theories of organology/media-as-externalization of mind/body—a philosophical-anthropological tradition that stretches from Plato through Ernst Kapp and finds its contemporary proponent in Bernard Stiegler—I propose that the phenomenological treatment of media as an outpouching and extension of mind qua intentionality is not sufficient to counter the ̳black-box‘ mystification of today‘s deep learning‘s algorithms. Focusing on a close study of Simondon‘s On the Existence of Technical Objectsand Individuation, I argue that the process-philosophical work of Gilbert (...) Simondon, with its critique of Norbert Wiener‘s first-order cybernetics, offers a precursor to the conception of second-order cybernetics (as endorsed byFrancisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, and Ricardo B. Uribe) and, specifically, its autopoietic treatment of information. It has been argued by those such as Frank Pasquale that neuro-inferential deep learning systems premised on predictive patterning, suchas AlphaGo Zero, have a veiled logic and, thus, are ̳black boxes‘. In detailing a philosophical-historical approach to demystify predictive patterning/processing and the logic of such deep learning algorithms, this paper attempts to shine a light on such systems and their inner workingsàla Simondon. (shrink)

In 1955, Norbert Wiener suggested a sociological model according to which all forms of culture ultimately depended on the temporal coordination of human activities, in particular their synchronization. The basis for Wiener’s model was provided by his insights into the temporal structures of cerebral processes. This article reconstructs the historical context of Wiener’s ‘brain clock’ hypothesis, largely via his dialogues with John W. Stroud and other scholars working at the intersection of neurophysiology, experimental psychology, and electrical engineering. Since the 19th (...) century, physiologists and psychologists have been conducting experimental investigations into the relation between time and the brain. Using innovative instruments and technologies, Stroud rehearsed these experiments, in part without paying any attention at all to the experimental traditions involved. Against this background, this article argues that the novelty of Wiener’s model relies largely on his productive rephrasing of physiological and psychological findings that had been established long before the Second World War. (shrink)

I develop an interdisciplinary framework for understanding the nature of agents and agency that is compatible with recent developments in the metaphysics of science and that also does justice to the mechanistic and normative characteristics of agents and agency as they are understood in moral philosophy, social psychology, neuroscience, robotics, and economics. The framework I develop is internal perspectivalist. That is to say, it counts agents as real in a perspective-dependent way, but not in a way that depends on an (...) external perspective. Whether or not something counts as an agent depends on whether it is able to have a certain kind of perspective. My approach differs from many others by treating possession of a perspective as more basic than the possession of agency, representational content/vehicles, cognition, intentions, goals, concepts, or mental or psychological states; these latter capabilities require the former, not the other way around. I explain what it means for a system to be able to have a perspective at all, beginning with simple cases in biology, and show how self-contained normative perspectives about proper function and control can emerge from mechanisms with relatively simple dynamics. I then describe how increasingly complex control architectures can become organized that allow for more complex perspectives that approach agency. Next, I provide my own account of the kind of perspective that is necessary for agency itself, the goal being to provide a reference against which other accounts can be compared. Finally, I introduce a crucial distinction that is necessary for understanding human agency: that between inclinational and committal agency, and venture a hypothesis about how the normative perspective underlying committal agency might be mechanistically realized. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on teleology and functions in biology. More precisely, it focuses on the scientific legitimacy of teleofunctional attributions and explanations in biology. It belongs to a multi-faceted debate that can be traced back to at least the 1970s. One aspect of the debate concerns the naturalization of functions. Most authors try to reduce, translate or explain functions and teleology in terms of efficient causes so that they find their place in the framework of the natural sciences. Our approach (...) here is radically different, as we question the premise that teleological explanations are disguised causal explanations. On the contrary, we defend that they are acceptable in natural sciences and in biology in particular. We challenge the idea that teleological explanations are immature causal explanations, as well as the idea that teleology and functions are some sort of intentional explanations. We therefore reject the accusations of anthropomorphism, vitalism and finalism. On the contrary, we defend that teleology, causality and intentionality correspond to different, autonomous and complementary modes of representation of the outside world. -/- ———[FRANÇAIS]——— -/- Ce travail de thèse porte sur la téléologie et les fonctions en biologie. Plus précisément, il porte sur la légitimité scientifique des attributions et des explications téléofonctionnelles en biologie. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un débat à plusieurs facettes que l’on peut faire remonter au moins jusqu’aux années 1970 et qui est encore très actif aujourd’hui. L’un des aspects du débat porte sur la naturalisation des fonctions, c’est-à-dire sur la manière de les réduire, de les traduire ou de les expliciter en termes de causes efficientes de sorte qu’elles trouvent leur place dans le cadre des sciences de la nature. Notre approche ici est radicalement différente, car nous remettons en question la prémisse selon laquelle les explications téléologiques seraient des explications causales déguisées. Nous défendons au contraire qu’elles sont acceptables en tant que telles aussi bien de façon générale que dans le domaine scientifique et en particulier en biologie. De façon générale, nous remettons en question l’idée selon laquelle la pensée téléologique serait une pensée causale immature, ainsi que sa dépendance présumée vis-à-vis de la psychologie, c’est-à-dire de l’intentionnalité. Nous rejetons donc les accusations d’anthropomorphisme, de vitalisme et de finalisme formulées contre elle. Nous défendons au contraire que la téléologie, la causalité et l’intentionnalité correspondent à des modes différents, autonomes et complémentaires de représentation du monde extérieur. (shrink)

One major fault line in foundational theories of cognition is between the so-called “representational” and “non-representational” theories. Is it possible to formulate an intermediate approach for a foundational theory of cognition by defining a conception of representation that may bridge the fault line? Such an account of representation, as well as an account of correspondence semantics, is offered here. The account extends previously developed agent-based pragmatic theories of semantic information, where meaning of an information state is defined by its interface (...) role, to a theory that accommodates a notion of representation and correspondence semantics. It is argued that the account can be used to develop an intermediate approach to cognition, by showing that the major sources of tension between “representational” and “non-representational” theories may be eased. (shrink)

Management involves change. The aim of this paper is to introduce a threefold classification of change with the purpose of making clear how the third type, creational change, is distinctive compared to the other two types. Four types of management situation are introduced, based on the type of change involved in the managed domain and in the management system. The role of creational change in management is discussed and a number of guidelines or suggestions relevant to this sort of management (...) are outlined. One feature of the notion of creational change is the conjecture that such change is not amenable to scientific investigation and understanding. Once creational change has produced whatever it does produce then the product may be amenable to scientific investigation and understanding but the actual unique and open process of its production will not be. One of the aims of this paper is to heighten our general awareness of creational change as different from other sorts of change. (shrink)

On présente trois projets de théories des machines: la « mécanologie » de l’architecte Jacques Lafitte (1932), inspirée de l’évolution biologique; l’ «Analyse mécanique» de Louis Couffignal, spécialiste des machines à calculer (1938), qui préfigure l’analyse fonctionnelle; et la théorie algébrique des machines du mathématicien Jacques Riguet (début des années 1950). À cette période, les trois hommes sont membres du Cercle d’études cybernétiques. On s’intéresse au dialogue des projets, aux axes d’unification et de divergence, aux styles, aux stratégies et postulats (...) de ces trois candidats à la généralisation convergeant vers la référence constituée par la cybernétique. (shrink)

Evolution's Arrow argues that evolution is directional and progressive, and that this has major consequences for humanity. Without resort to teleology, the book demonstrates that evolution moves in the direction of producing cooperative organisations of greater scale and evolvability - evolution has organised molecular processes into cells, cells into organisms, and organisms into societies. The book founds this position on a new theory of the evolution of cooperation. It shows that self-interest at the level of the genes does not prevent (...) cooperation from increasing as evolution unfolds. Evolution progresses by discovering ways to build cooperative organisations out of self-interested individuals. The book also shows that evolution itself has evolved. Evolution has progressively improved the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to discover effective adaptations. And it has produced new and better mechanisms. Evolution's Arrow uses this understanding of the direction of evolution to identify the next great steps in the evolution of life on earth - the steps that humanity must take if we are to continue to be successful in evolutionary terms. A key step for humanity is to increase the scale and evolvability of our societies, eventually forming a unified and cooperative society on the scale of the planet. We must also transform ourselves psychologically to become self-evolving organisms - organisms that are able to escape their biological and cultural past by adapting in whatever directions are necessary to achieve future evolutionary success. (shrink)

We argue that one important aspect of the “cognitive neuroscience revolution” identified by Boone and Piccinini :1509–1534. doi: 10.1007/s11229-015-0783-4, 2015) is a dramatic shift away from thinking of cognitive representations as arbitrary symbols towards thinking of them as icons that replicate structural characteristics of their targets. We argue that this shift has been driven both “from below” and “from above”—that is, from a greater appreciation of what mechanistic explanation of information-processing systems involves, and from a greater appreciation of the problems (...) solved by bio-cognitive systems, chiefly regulation and prediction. We illustrate these arguments by reference to examples from cognitive neuroscience, principally representational similarity analysis and the emergence of dynamical models as a central postulate in neurocognitive research. (shrink)

This paper deals with the question of agency and intentionality in the context of the free-energy principle. The free-energy principle is a system-theoretic framework for understanding living self-organizing systems and how they relate to their environments. I will first sketch the main philosophical positions in the literature: a rationalist Helmholtzian interpretation (Hohwy 2013; Clark 2013), a cybernetic interpretation (Seth 2015b) and the enactive affordance-based interpretation (Bruineberg and Rietveld 2014; Bruineberg et al. 2016) and will then show how agency and intentionality (...) are construed differently on these different philosophical interpretations. I will then argue that a purely Helmholtzian is limited, in that it can account only account for agency in the context of perceptual inference. The cybernetic account cannot give a full account of action, since purposiveness is accounted for only to the extent that it pertains to the control of homeostatic essential variables. I will then argue that the enactive affordance-based account attempts to provide broader account of purposive action without presupposing goals and intentions coming from outside of the theory. In the second part of the paper, I will discuss how each of these three interpretations conceives of the sense agency and intentionality in different ways. (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)

Decompositional equivalence is the principle that there is no preferred decomposition of the universe into subsystems. It is shown here, by using a simple thought experiment, that quantum theory follows from decompositional equivalence together with Landauer’s principle. This demonstration raises within physics a question previously left to psychology: how do human—or any—observers identify or agree about what constitutes a “system of interest”?

“Freedom” is a phenomenon in the natural world. This phenomenon—and indirectly the question of free will—is explored using a variety of systems-theoretic ideas. It is argued that freedom can emerge only in systems that are partially determined and partially random, and that freedom is a matter of degree. The paper considers types of freedom and their conditions of possibility in simple living systems and in complex living systems that have modeling subsystems. In simple living systems, types of freedom include independence (...) from fixed materiality, internal rather than external determination, activeness that is unblocked and holistic, and the capacity to choose or alter environmental constraint. In complex living systems, there is freedom in satisfaction of lower level needs that allows higher potentials to be realized. Several types of freedom also manifest in the modeling subsystems of these complex systems: in the transcending of automatism in subjective experience, in reason as instrument for passion yet also in reason ruling over passion, in independence from informational colonization by the environment, and in mobility of attention. Considering the wide range of freedoms in simple and complex living systems allows a panoramic view of this diverse and important natural phenomenon. (shrink)

In this paper we review the critical reception given by Niklas Luhmann's General Theory of Social Systems to the classical Information Theory, as basis of its postulation of a General Sociological Theory entirely founded on the Theory of Communication. Our hypothesis suggests that the formulation of the synthetic model of communication re-formulates the classical model of Shannon, through a replacement of tele-communicative accents by sociological accents. En este trabajo revisamos la recepción crítica dada por la teoría de sistemas sociales de (...) Niklas Luhmann a la teoría de la información clásica, en el marco de su postulación de una teoría general de la sociología fundada en la teoría de la comunicación. La hipótesis que defendemos es que la formulación del modelo sintético de la comunicación reformula el modelo clásico de Shannon, mediante una sustitución de los acentos telecomunicativos por acentos sociológicos. (shrink)

Social thinkers often use the concept of intersubjectivity to mark out a problem of theoretical sociology: If people are unable to look into each others' minds, why do they often understand each other nonetheless? This issue has been debated extensively by philosophers and sociologists in three largely disconnected discourses. The article investigates the three discourses for isolable ideas that can be fitted into a sociological answer to the problem of intersubjectivity. An interactional solution, fully coherent with key insights from the (...) discourses, is offered at the end of the article. Its main point is to identify coordinative interactional mechanisms that compel participants to "make themselves understandable" vis-à-vis their interaction partners. (shrink)

Context: The enactive paradigm in the cognitive sciences is establishing itself as a strong and comprehensive alternative to the computationalist mainstream. However, its own particular historical roots have so far been largely ignored in the historical analyses of the cognitive sciences. Problem: In order to properly assess the enactive paradigm’s theoretical foundations in terms of their validity, novelty and potential future directions of development, it is essential for us to know more about the history of ideas that has led to (...) the current state of affairs. Method: The meaning of the disappearance of the field of cybernetics and the rise of second-order cybernetics is analyzed by taking a closer look at the work of representative figures for each of the phases: Rosenblueth, Wiener and Bigelow for the early wave of cybernetics, Ashby for its culmination, and von Foerster for the development of the second-order approach. Results: It is argued that the disintegration of cybernetics eventually resulted in two distinct scientific traditions, one going from symbolic AI to modern cognitive science on the one hand, and the other leading from second-order cybernetics to the current enactive paradigm. Implications: We can now understand that the extent to which the cognitive sciences have neglected their cybernetic parent is precisely the extent to which cybernetics had already carried the tendencies that would later find fuller expression in second-order cybernetics. (shrink)

Considers that in ecosystem, landscape and global ecology, an energetics reading of ecological systems is an expression of a cybernetic, systemic and holistic approach. In ecosystem ecology, the Odumian paradigm emphasizes the concept of emergence, but it has not been accompanied by the creation of a method that fully respects the complexity of the objects studied. In landscape ecology, although the emergentist, multi-level, triadic methodology of J.K. Feibleman and D.T. Campbell has gained acceptance, the importance of emergent properties is still (...) undervalued. In global ecology, the Gaia hypothesis is an expression of an organicist metaphor, while the emergentist terminology used is incongruent with the underlying physicalist cybernetics. More generally, an analytico-additional methodology and the reduction of the properties of ecosystems to the laws of physical chemistry render purely formal any assertion about the emergentist and holistic nature of the ecological systems studied. (shrink)

With the advent of computers in the experimental labs, dynamic systems have become a new tool for research on problem solving and decision making. A short review of this research is given and the main features of these systems (connectivity and dynamics) are illustrated. To allow systematic approaches to the influential variables in this area, two formal frameworks (linear structural equations and finite state automata) are presented. Besides the formal background, the article sets out how the task demands of system (...) identification and system control can be realised in these environments, and how psychometrically acceptable dependent variables can be derived. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of the traditional computational metaphor in our thinking as computer scientists, its influence on epistemological styles, and its implications for our understanding of cognition. It proposes to replace the conventional metaphor--a sequence of steps--with the notion of a community of interacting entities, and examines the ramifications of such a shift on these various ways in which we think.

The relations between simplicity and economy, and between simplicity and complexity, are briefly discussed, and it is suggested that an appearance of simplicity may arise out of the matching of two complexities, e.g. in the perception of a simple color. Following out this idea, it is shown that scientific activity may be regarded as a matching of theoretical complexity against the complexity of nature, which leads to an expectation of an optimum theoretical complexity for successful scientific work. Some senses of (...) "success" in this context are discussed, and the role of computing machines in helping to achieve it assessed. (shrink)

The holism-reductionism debate, one of the classic subjects of study in the philosopy of science, is currently at the heart of epistemological concerns in ecology. Yet the division between holism and reductionism does not always stand out clearly in this field. In particular, almost all work in ecosystem ecology and landscape ecology presents itself as holistic and emergentist. Nonetheless, the operational approaches used rely on conventional reductionist methodology.From an emergentist epistemological perspective, a set of general 'transactional' principles inspired by the (...) work of J. Dewey and J.K. Feibleman are proposed in an effort to develop a coherent ontological and methodological semantics. (shrink)

The subjectivism of the Austrian school of economics is a special case of Dewey's transactional philosophy, also known as pragmatism or pragmatic epistemology. The Austrian economists Carl Friedrich Menger (1840-1921) and Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) adopted an Aristotelian deductive approach to economic issues such as social behavior and exchange. Like Menger and Mises, Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992) viewed scientific knowledge, even in the social sciences, as asserting and aiming for objective certainty. Hayek was particularly critical of attempts to apply the (...) empiricism of the natural sciences in the social sciences. Though Hayek was not a positivist in the sense ascribed to Milton Friedman (1912-), because he accepted the possibility of final, objective certainty, Hayek's view of scientific knowledge was closer to that of the logical positivists of the Vienna circle than to Dewey's pragmatism. Mises' a priorism, asserting and aiming for apodictic certainty, represented a more extreme form of objectivism even than Hayek's. Mises was similar in this regard to non-Austrian axiomatists such as Gerard Debreau (1921-2005), though he joined Hayek in eschewing mathematical formalism. In Dewey's contrasting view, the scientist commends new, alternative ways of knowing to the scientific community, offering more profound insight or more efficacious practical applications. Alternative ways of knowing which do not offer practical or intellectual benefits are to be rejected. Both the radical subjectivism of the Austrian school and Dewey's transactional strategy justify rejection of the mirage of social justice. Dewey's knowledge as ways of knowing suggests a broader and more fundamental critique of the socialist position in the calculation debate. The arguments presented by the Austrian school can be reformulated in terms of Dewey's pragmatic philosophy. (shrink)

The primary objective of this paper is to review the notions of Umwelt and Functional Cycle from semiophilosophical and cybersemiotic perspectives and to propose new ways of reading these concepts. We consider that Umwelt theory is framed within “cryptosemiotics” as a field of knowledge, since it establishes an explanatory field capable of putting new paths for research on the table while allowing the elaboration of theoretical foundations for the understanding of semiosis. In addition, it is possible to establish a cybernetic (...) view on the idea of the functional cycle as a pre-requisite for meaning and communication, which entails a cybersemiotics point of view of meaning emergence. Then, in this paper, we propose a philosophical, cybernetic, and cybersemiotics reading of von Uexküll’s Umwelt theory. (shrink)

Alan M. Turing’s last published work and some posthumously published manuscripts were dedicated to the development of his theory of organic pattern formation. In “The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis” (1952), he provided an elaborated mathematical formulation of the theory of the origins of biological form that had been first proposed by Sir D’Arcy Wendworth Thompson in On Growth and Form (1917/1942). While arguably his most mathematically detailed and his systematically most ambitious effort, Turing’s morphogenetical writings also form the most thematically (...) self-contained and least philosophically explored part of his work. We dedicate our inquiry to the reasons and the implications of Turing’s choice of biological topic and viewpoint. We will probe for possible factors in Turing’s choice that go beyond availability and acquaintance with On Growth and Form. On these grounds, we will explore how and to what extent his theory of morphogenesis actually ties in with his concept of mechanistic computation. Notably, Thompson’s pioneering work in biological ‘structuralism’ was organicist in outlook and explicitly critical of the Darwinian approaches that were popular with Turing’s cyberneticist contemporaries—and partly used by Turing himself in his proto-connectionist models of learning. Resolving this apparent dichotomy, we demonstrate how Turing’s quest for mechanistic explanations of how organisation emerges in nature leaves room for a non-mechanist view of nature. (shrink)

When we deal with complex things, like human subjects or organizations, we deal with identity – that which makes a person or an organization what it is and distinguishes him/her/it from other persons or organizations, a kind of “self”. Our identity determines how we think about and interact with others. It will be argued in this chapter that the self is constituted relationally. Moreover, when we are in the realm of the self, we are always already in the realm of (...) engaging with and mediating differences – the realm of ethics. The position which will be developed argues that approaching identity as a complex system allows us to resist thinking of identity as an easily identifiable and static entity. Identity is always being constituted within a complex and contingent world, where we have to make choices based on contingent values rather than on universal knowledge or the outcome of rational calculations. As a result, we have to keep in mind that our daily practices always already have an ethical component, and our decisions need to be continually evaluated and re-evaluated in the light of our (and others’) varying identities. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show an application of variety engineering in the social realm. It focuses on reducing environmental complexity by catalysing self-organizing processes. This catalysis is based on the use of Sen and Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. By doing this an organization may improve the quality of the relations with their clients by transforming environmental agents into new suppliers. This approach opens a new dimension of social responsibility for organizations. A particular case is presented in which a (...) regional university in Colombia faces the challenge of attending low-income students coming from small municipalities. They designed a strategy to offer low-cost housing and a daily balanced meal without using the university's own resources. Instead, they managed to involve some agents of the community by developing their capabilities. This kind of variety engineering shows the possibility of new forms of social responsibility in universities by incorporating the capabilities approach into their managerial practices. This is something that is currently under study in other universities. (shrink)

A summary of a philosophical (ontological) system of consistent relativism based on the postulate of relativity of existence of all things in existence is proposed. Absolutely everything exists, but, at the same time, no existence is absolute. Anything is possible, but only those entities we interact with one way or another exist for us, i.e., reality is interaction, “I interact—hence, I exist”. For all of us, information, or perceptible heterogeneities, is real. There exists an infinity of different realities. The different (...) levels of entities’ existence, in particular, of the Life and the Mind, should be taken into consideration. The existence of live systems in relation to non-living entities is undetermined, thus the alive can appear in its specifically live properties only through interaction with living things: there’s no difference between alive and dead for the stones. An even greater range of levels of existence can be brought about through interaction—that is the core idea of Gödel’s theorem. As a result, the range of forms of existence tends towards infinity—the evolution of matter through the Overmind will bring us up to God. This ontological position assumes a series of non-trivial physical conclusions, which can be tested experimentally, including the use of mathematical models. Rotation could be used to increase inertial mass and decrease gravitational mass, slowing down time. A more generalized mathematical model of the physical world, including a universal operator of the co-existence of objects, can be developed. In this model of Reality, superluminal speeds (without interaction) are possible and the Universe is open. (shrink)

According to the free energy principle, life is an “inevitable and emergent property of any random dynamical system at non-equilibrium steady state that possesses a Markov blanket” :20130475, 2013). Formulating a principle for the life sciences in terms of concepts from statistical physics, such as random dynamical system, non-equilibrium steady state and ergodicity, places substantial constraints on the theoretical and empirical study of biological systems. Thus far, however, the physics foundations of the free energy principle have received hardly any attention. (...) Here, we start to fill this gap and analyse some of the challenges raised by applications of statistical physics for modelling biological targets. Based on our analysis, we conclude that model-building grounded in the free energy principle exacerbates a trade-off between generality and realism, because of a fundamental mismatch between its physics assumptions and the properties of actual biological targets. (shrink)

The increasing precision of observations of the large-scale structure of the universe has created a problem for simulators: running the simulations necessary to interpret these observations has become impractical. Simulators have thus turned to machine learning (ML) algorithms instead. Though ML decreases computational expense, one might be worried about the use of ML for scientific investigations: How can algorithms that have repeatedly been described as black-boxes deliver scientific understanding? In this paper, I investigate how cosmologists employ ML, arguing that in (...) this context, ML algorithms should not be considered black-boxes and can deliver genuine scientific understanding. Accordingly, understanding the methodological role of ML algorithms is crucial to understanding the types of questions they are capable of, and ought to be responsible for, answering. (shrink)

This paper argues that intelligence can be approximated by the ability to produce accurate predictions. It is further argued that general intelligence can be approximated by context dependent predictive abilities combined with the ability to use working memory to abstract away contextual information. The flexibility associated with general intelligence can be understood as the ability to use selective attention to focus on specific aspects of sensory impressions to identify patterns, which can then be used to predict events in novel situations (...) and environments. The argumentation synthesizes Godfrey-Smith’s environmental complexity theory, adding the notion of niche broadness as well as changes concerning the view of cognition and control, and Hohwy’s predictive mind theory, making explicit the significance of accuracy as a composite of trueness and precision where the nervous system acts as a distributed controller motivating actions that keep the body in homeostasis. (shrink)

Vector autoregression (VAR) modeling allows probing bidirectional relationships in gender/sex development and may support hypothesis testing following multi-modal data collection. We show VAR in three lights: supporting a hypothesis, rejecting a hypothesis, and opening up new questions. To illustrate these capacities of VAR, we reanalyzed longitudinal data that recorded dyadic mother-infant interactions for 15 boys and 15 girls aged 3 to 11 months of age. We examined monthly counts of 15 infant behaviors and 13 maternal behaviors (Seifert et al., 1994). (...) VAR models demonstrated that infant crawling predicted a subsequently close feedback loop from mothers of boys but a subsequently open ended, branched response from mothers of girls. A different finding showed that boys’ standing independently later predicted significant later increases of four maternal behaviors: rocking/jiggling, lifting, affectionate touching, and stimulation of infant gross-motor activity. In contrast, crawling by girls led mothers to later decrease the same maternal behaviors. Thus, VAR might allow us to identify how mothers respond differently during daily interactions depending on infant gender/sex. The present work intends mainly to showcase the VAR method in the specific context of the empirical study of gender/sex development. (shrink)

Today, artificial intelligence, especially machine learning, is structurally dependent on human participation. Technologies such as Deep Learning (DL) leverage networked media infrastructures and human-machine interaction designs to harness users to provide training and verification data. The emergence of DL is therefore based on a fundamental socio-technological transformation of the relationship between humans and machines. Rather than simulating human intelligence, DL-based AIs capture human cognitive abilities, so they are hybrid human-machine apparatuses. From a perspective of media philosophy and social-theoretical critique, I (...) differentiate five types of “media technologies of capture” in AI apparatuses and analyze them as forms of power relations between humans and machines. Finally, I argue that the current hype about AI implies a relational and distributed understanding of (human/artificial) intelligence, which I categorize under the term “cybernetic AI”. This form of AI manifests in socio-technological apparatuses that involve new modes of subjectivation, social control and discrimination of users. (shrink)

This paper explores some of the factors that make complex systems complex. We first examine the history of complex systems. It was Aristotle’s insight that how elements are joined together helps determine the properties of the resulting whole. We find (a) that scientific reductionism does not provide a sufficient explanation; (b) that to understand complex systems, one must identify and trace energy flows; and (c) that disproportionate causality, including global tipping points, are all around us. Disproportionate causality results from the (...) wide availability of energy stores. We discuss three categories of emergent phenomena—static, dynamic, and adaptive—and recommend retiring the term emergent, except perhaps as a synonym for creative. Finally, we find that virtually all communication is stigmergic. (shrink)

Any successful account of the metaphysics of mechanistic causation must satisfy at least five key desiderata. In this article, I lay out these five desiderata and explain why existing accounts of the metaphysics of mechanistic causation fail to satisfy them. I then present an alternative account that does satisfy the five desiderata. According to this alternative account, we must resort to a type of ontological entity that is new to metaphysics, but not to science: constraints. In this article, I explain (...) how a constraints-based metaphysics fits best with the emerging consensus on the nature of mechanistic explanation. 1Introduction2Renormalizability2.1The first two desiderata: Intrinsicness and productivity2.2The third desideratum: Scientific validity or non-mysteriousness2.3The fourth desideratum: Directionality2.4The fifth desideratum: Perspectival nature of mechanisms3Constraints and Causation3.1Multi-perspectival realism and causal structure3.2Causal structure as laws3.3Causal structures in analytical mechanics: Constraints3.4A metaphysics inspired by analytical mechanics: Constraints as ontologically primitive modal structures4Constraints and Mechanistic Causal Powers 4.1Inter- versus intra-perspectival categories4.2Mechanistic causal powers are grounded by constraints4.3Intrinsicness and constraints4.4Constraints and productiveness4.5Constraints and directionality5Conclusion. (shrink)

The so-called “dark room problem” makes vivd the challenges that purely predictive models face in accounting for motivation. I argue that the problem is a serious one. Proposals for solving the dark room problem via predictive coding architectures are either empirically inadequate or computationally intractable. The Free Energy principle might avoid the problem, but only at the cost of setting itself up as a highly idealized model, which is then literally false to the world. I draw at least one optimistic (...) conclusion, however. Real-world, real-time systems may embody motivational states in a variety of ways consistent with idealized principles like FEP, including ways that are intuitively embodied and extended. This may allow predictive coding theorists to reconcile their account with embodied principles, even if it ultimately undermines loftier ambitions. (shrink)

The function of groups as information processors is increasingly being recognised in a number of theories of group cognition. A theme of many of these is an emphasis on sharing cognition. This paper extends current conceptualisations of groups by critiquing the focus on shared cognition and emphasising the distribution of cognition in groups. In particular, it develops an account of the distribution of one cognitive construct, mental models. Mental models have been chosen as a focus because they are used in (...) a number of theories of high level cognition from different areas of research such as cognitive science and human factors and so the implication of this development is wide reaching. This paper reviews the unconnected literatures on distributed cognition and mental models and integrates them in order to extend the theory of mental models to distributed cognitive systems such as groups. The distributed cognition literature is reviewed and the importance of considering the group as single cognitive system is adopted. A range of mental model theories are reviewed leading to the conclusion that they all have, in some form, the central feature of a mapping onto the cognitive system. Combining these two ideas, it is proposed that the model can be a mapping onto the whole group, if the information is distributed appropriately and the connections between parts of the model maintained through communication. This cognitive construct is referred to as a distributed mental model. Implications and applications of this theory are discussed. (shrink)

This conceptual article suggests a reexamination of current governance structures, specifically those of unitary boards after the financial crisis of 2008.We suggest that the existing governance structures are based on an outdated paradigm of business, rooted in economics. We propose an alternative paradigm, a more humanistic paradigm, which allows conceiving alternative, network-oriented governance structures. As hierarchical firms grow larger and more complex, the risk of failure increases from biases, errors, and missing data in communication and control systems. These problems are (...) exacerbated by information overload on senior managers, directors, and their respective regulators. In contrast to traditional corporate governance, network governance introduces a division of power via multiple boards, checks and balances, and active stakeholder engagement. We argue that those features could have prevented the stresses and failures of financial firms in 2008, since they were anticipated by both individuals within firms and external commentators. However, those exposed to risks possessed insufficient influence in either governing and/or regulating firms to take corrective action. (shrink)

Recent research has explored the principles of service system viability based on systems inquiry invoking perspectives from Systems Theory and Cybernetics in particular Stafford Beer’s viable systems model. However based on Banathy & Jenlink, Systems inquiry encompasses more than just Systems Theory and includes domains such as Systems Methodology and Systems Philosophy. Building on the extant literature, our work has the following particularities: 1) it is based on an explicit systems philosophy in which we explicitly define what we view as (...) viability and, 2) it involves a systems methodological approach to either analyze the viability of a service system or to design a viable service system. This is achieved by means of applying a systems modeling technique called SEAM. SEAM rests upon systemic principles and embodies conceptualizations from VSM. We apply SEAM to concretely model a utility company in Geneva, Switzerland in order to gain an understanding of how a service system maintains its identity and remains viable in its environment. (shrink)

This article addresses the following problems: What is a mechanism, how can it be discovered, and what is the role of the knowledge of mechanisms in scientific explanation and technological control? The proposed answers are these. A mechanism is one of the processes in a concrete system that makes it what it is — for example, metabolism in cells, interneuronal connections in brains, work in factories and offices, research in laboratories, and litigation in courts of law. Because mechanisms are largely (...) or totally imperceptible, they must be conjectured. Once hypothesized they help explain, because a deep scientific explanation is an answer to a question of the form, "How does it work, that is, what makes it tick—what are its mechanisms?" Thus, by contrast with the subsumption of particulars under a generalization, an explanation proper consists in unveiling some lawful mechanism, as when political stability is explained by either coercion, public opinion manipulation, or democratic participation. Finding mechanisms satisfies not only the yearning for understanding, but also the need for control. Key Words: explanation • function • mechanism • process • system • systemism. (shrink)

Cyberspeak, the language of cybernetics, or its metalanguage to be more precise, consists of words that are both explaining and describing human/animal and machine forms of control and communication, while in newspeak, words were value-laden, which means they had strong positive or negative connotations connected to their use. For example, a 'spy' could only be a foreign agent, while a Russian one was a 'patriot'. First, it will be shown how there are still remnants of cyberspeak in modern science, pinpointing (...) its cybernetic background and shaping our thoughts without us realizing they had any cybernetic origin whatsoever. Second, it will be investigated how newspeak, as its counterpart, can be analyzed from the theory of speech acts. Third, the current war in Ukraine allowed us a brief analysis of newspeak present in Russian public communication today (Putin's speeches), which will again be connected to their performative aspect. (shrink)

Causal models of agents have been used to analyse the safety aspects of machine learning systems. But identifying agents is non-trivial -- often the causal model is just assumed by the modeler without much justification -- and modelling failures can lead to mistakes in the safety analysis. This paper proposes the first formal causal definition of agents -- roughly that agents are systems that would adapt their policy if their actions influenced the world in a different way. From this we (...) derive the first causal discovery algorithm for discovering agents from empirical data, and give algorithms for translating between causal models and game-theoretic influence diagrams. We demonstrate our approach by resolving some previous confusions caused by incorrect causal modelling of agents. (shrink)

This thesis investigates how recurrent face-to-face social interactions engender relatively invariant patterns of being together that cause those who instantiate them to act in ways that support their reproduction. Existing accounts within both cognitive science and sociology offer important insights into the consideration of patterns of being together. However, given their explanatory strategies, they struggle to integrate both ‘social’ and ‘individual’ levels of explanation. Herein a compatibilist account is developed, intended as a ‘third way’ that obviates the limitations of existing (...) accounts. This compatibilist account — by integrating insights from across disciplines and theoretical frameworks — develops a philosophical vocabulary with which to maintain explanatory consistency when articulating patterns of being together and moving between individual and social levels of explanation. It relies heavily on an extension of the enactive notion of autonomous habits to the social domain, redescribing patterns of being together as habituated participatory sense-making frames. Participatory sense-making frames result from processes of coenhabiting, i.e. processes of ongoing social habit making implicit in the dynamics of recurrent social interactions. Such processes are one primary means by which we produce and reproduce the relatively stable forms that characterise our shared worlds. These habituated frames embed much of the normativity of social life, and can serve our felicitous coordinations therein, allowing us to feel well situated, particularly in contexts within which we have some history of interacting. However, when they are not well aligned, they lead to tensions that result in either the production of novel frames or breakdowns in social interaction. The account developed has implications for many domains of human action, from psychotherapy to epistemology, and from critical studies to the development of political and ecological praxes. (shrink)

Team members co-regulate their activities and move together at the collective level of behavior while coordinating their actions toward shared goals. In parallel with team processes, team members need to resolve uncertainties arising from the changing task and environment. In this exploratory study we have measured the differential neurodynamics of seven two-person healthcare teams across time and brain regions during autonomous and collaborative segments of simulation training. The questions posed were: whether these abstract and mostly integrated constructs could be separated (...) neurodynamically; and, what could be learned about taskwork and teamwork by trying to do so? The taskwork and teamwork frameworks used were Neurodynamic Information, an electroencephalography derived measure shown to be a neurodynamic proxy for the pauses and hesitations associated with individual uncertainty, and inter-brain EEG coherence which is a required component of social interactions. No interdependency was observed between NI and IBC, and second-by-second dynamic comparisons suggested mutual exclusivity. These studies show that proxies for fundamental properties of teamwork and taskwork can be separated neurodynamically during team performances of ecologically valid tasks. The persistent expression of NI and IBC were not simultaneous suggesting that it may be difficult for team members to maintain inter-brain coherence while simultaneously reducing their individual uncertainties. Lastly, these separate dynamics occur over time frames of 15–30 s providing time for real-time detection and mitigation of individual and collaborative complications during training or live patient encounters. (shrink)