"[..] flowing with the waters, halting with the mountains. In the images of light and wind the ephemeral is inscribed. Time is part of space. The scene performs." -/- The essay "Chinese Landscape Aesthetics: the exchange and nurturing of emotions" by Claudia Westermann included in "New Horizons: Eight Perspectives on Chinese Landscape Architecture Today" introduces ideas of landscape in traditional Chinese thought. Following the etymology of the Chinese terms for landscape and recognizing that their conceptual focus is on the exchange (...) and nurturing of emotions, which is not captured by the English term 'landscape,' one may gain a new understanding of contemporary works of Chinese landscape architecture. (shrink)

The impact of Cyberculture, of digital devices on young people as extensions of the body, can be seen in terms of the decreasing structuring of thoughts and information, increasing impulsivity in perception and action, and the development of more primitive defense mechanisms. These adverse impacts result in the feeling of isolation and devaluation, frustration of present and uncertainty of the future, exteriorization and floating identities, mimetic and adhesive identifications, less cohesion of the self, and decreasing tolerance of the other. This (...) paper focuses on the following themes: Symbiosis versus syncretism: The affirmations of symbiosis. The dilutions of syncretism. Synopsis: Too much syncretism, too little symbiosis. Lack of a deeper co-construction of knowledge, more lasting, and sustainable. Lack of increased more independent personal cognitive deepening. Lack of ability to be alone. Causality and free will: Symbiotic versus syncretic causality. Conclusions: Cyber-selfs—either distributed or not at all? (shrink)

Cogitation described as calculation, the living being described as a machine, cognitive functions considered as algorithmic sequences and the ‘mechanization’ of the subjective were the theoretical elements that late heideggerian anti–humanism, especially in France was able to utilize[1], even more so, after the second cybernetics or post-cybernetics movement of the late ‘60s introduced the concepts of the autopoietic and the allopoietic automata[2]. Recently, neurologists pose claims on the traditional epistemological field of philosophy, proceeding from this ontological decision, the equation of (...) human cognition to cybernetic systems. -/- The emergence of the world-wide-web in the 1990s and the global expansion of the internet during the first decades of the 21st century indicate the fallacies of the cybernetics programme to mechanize the mind. We stand witnesses to a semantic colonization of the cybernetic system, a social imaginary creation and expansion within the digital ensemblistic – identitarian organization that cannot be described by mechanical or cybernetic terms. Paradoxically, cyberspace, as a new being, a form of alterity, seems to both exacerbate and capsize the polarization between the operational and the symbolic. The creation of the internet might be more than an epistemological revolution, to use the terminology of Thomas Kuhn. It might be an ontological revolution. -/- I will try to demonstrate that the emergence of the Internet refutes any such claims, since its context and utility can only be described by means of a social epistemology based on the understanding of social significances as continuous creations of an anonymous social imaginary proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997). I will try to explore some social-semantic aspects of the cyberspace as a nexus of social representations of the individual identity that forms a new sphere of being, where the subjective and the objective merge in a virtual subjective objectivity with unique epistemological attributes and possibilities. (shrink)

As concepts, communication and information are very closely related, but they also designate more than their usual conceptual meaning when they are called upon in social theories as well as in philosophical theories about the reality and the truth of social life; information and communication are then designating physical events or event like objects of the observable reality, which will be hereafter described as a procedural ontologization of information. Why do they have this role and how do they play it (...) in contemporary social sciences and philosophy of social sciences? This article questions the scientificity of these concepts in these theoretical contexts. It wants to propose a framework for an epistemology of communication and information that is critical about the cybernetician paradigm in the social sciences. It presents this paradigm’s main features: informational ontology and probabilistic sociality. It offers a critique of this paradigm’s epistemological and methodological pretensions. It finally exposes the basis of an alternative philosophical theory of communication that wants to support the thesis that the cybernetician paradigmatic communication theory is not scientifically productive; and that it cannot be used in social scientific theoretical contexts without being dramatically redesigned and reoriented towards new goals. (shrink)

I trace the development of an emerging global Information and Computing Ethics , arguing that ethical pluralism – as found in both Western and Asian traditions – is crucial to such an ICE. In particular, ethical pluralism – as affiliated with notions of judgment , reson-ance, and harmony – holds together shared ethical norms alongside the irreducible differences that define individual and cultural identities. I demonstrate how such pluralism is already at work in both contemporary theory and praxis, including in (...) development projects in diverse cul-tures. I conclude with a number of resonances between this global pluralism and African thought and tradi-tions that thus suggest that such a pluralism may also succeed in the African context, as diverse African cultures and countries seek to benefit from ICTs while maintaining their cultural identities. (shrink)

Cílem článku je v historickém kontextu analyzovat základy, na nichž stojí dnešní vědní obor kybernetika, a nabídnout takovou definici kybernetiky, která by odpovídala jak jejím původním kořenům, tak i aktuální institucionalizované vědeckovýzkumné a vývojové praxi. Článek klade důraz na hluboce zakořeněnou inženýrskou motivaci kybernetiky, kybernetickou metaforu člověk-stroj, na spřažení mezi člověkem a strojem a na kybernetiku jako diskurzivní praktiku. Historický kontext je zaměřen na rané období americké kybernetiky a proto-kybernetiky.

Dieses Dossier wirft die Frage auf, welche Wirkung das digitale Zeitalter auf die Menschen hat und zeigt, welcher Zusammenhang zwischen der Philosophie und der Informationstechnologie besteht: Privatsphäre im Internet, künstliche Intelligenz, Computerethik und auch in Bezug auf Datenschutzfragen.

This essay describes a new ethical theory that has begun to coalesce from the works of several scholars in the international computer ethics community. I call the new theory ‚Flourishing Ethics’ because of its Aristotelian roots, though it also includes ideas suggestive of Taoism and Buddhism. In spite of its roots in ancient ethical theories, Flourishing Ethics is informed and grounded by recent scientific insights into the nature of living things, human nature and the fundamental nature of the universe – (...) ideas from today’s information theory, astrophysics and genetics. Flourishing Ethics can be divided conveniently into two parts. The first part, which I call ‚Human-Centered FE,’ is focused exclusively upon human beings – their actions, values and characters. The second part, which I call ‚General FE,’ applies to every physical entity in the universe, including humans. Rather than replacing traditional ‚great ethical theories,’ Flourishing Ethics is likely to deepen and broaden our understanding of them. (shrink)

Feminist work on computing technology has for the most part concentrated on concepts of cyborgs and notions of embodiment in cyberspace. It is the contention of this paper that, as yet, these conceptions have, outstripped the realities of the technology and that an alternative and technically realistic model is that of the computer virus. The virus has all the positive theoretical advantages of the cyborg, as well as the added benefits of being in existence now as opposed to the product (...) of science fiction, and viruses may be capable of use as a tool for education and activism. Thus, this paper shall examine the limitations of current cyber feminism, and the range of possibilities viral hacktavistic feminism opens up. (shrink)

Settimo Termini pioneered along with Aldo de Luca the concept of fuzziness measures in the sixties. Today he is a Full Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at the University of Palermo and an affiliated researcher at the European Center for Soft Computing, Mieres, Spain. He has directed from 2002 to 2009 the Istituto di Cibernetica "Eduardo Caianiello" of CNR in Italy. Among his scientific interests, the introduction and formal development of the theory of measures of fuzziness; an analysis in innovative (...) terms of the notion of vague predicate as it appears and is used in Information Sciences, Cybernetics and AI. Recently he has been interested also on the connections between scientific research and economic development and the conceptual foundations of Fuzzy Sets and Soft Computing. He is Fellow of the International Fuzzy System Association and of the Accademia Nazionale di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti of Palermo. In 2015 he will be 70, and we want to celebrate his birthday with the Soft Computing community with this interview where he discusses history of Cybernetics. The interview was conducted in Italian and translated by the authors. (shrink)

This article praises the development of second order cybernetics by von Foerster, Maturana, and Varela as an important step in deepening our understanding of the bio-psychological foundation of the dynamics of information, cognition, and communication. Luhmann's development of the theory into the realm of social communication is seen as a necessary and important move. The triple autopoietic differentiation between biological, psychological, and social-communicative autopoiesis and the introduction of a technical concept of meaning is central. Finally, the paper shows that second (...) order cybernetics lacks explicit and ontological concepts of emotion, meaning, and a concept of signs. C. S. Peirce's theory is introduced for this purpose. It is then shown, through Varela's development of Spencer Brown's ‘Laws of Form’ from a dual to a dynamic triadic categorical structure, that both theories are triadic and second order, and therefore can be fruitfully fused to a Cybersemiotics. (shrink)