Occam’s razor is frequently considered to be a cornerstone of the scientific method. Indeed, it was and remains a valuable tool for scientific and philosophical inquiry. However, we provided an overview of some historical instances in which it led science away from a reasonable and sound heuristic approach. Some words of caution are necessary to clarify how, contrary to common belief, a too strict adherence to such a principle did not guarantee scientific rigor but, rather, obstructed further progress.

In our target article, “Learning and the evolution of conscious agents” we outlined an evolutionary approach to consciousness, arguing that the evolution of a form of open-ended, representational, and generative learning (unlimited associative learning, UAL) drove the evolution of consciousness. Our view highlights the dynamics and functions of consciousness, delineates its taxonomic distribution and suggests a framework for exploring its developmental and evolutionary modifications. The approach we offer resonates with biosemioticians’ views, but as the responses to our target article show, (...) our proposal also faces challenges and has led to suggestions that extend, develop and qualify it. Our response to the 14 varied and rich commentaries starts with the recurring and deep question raised by many of them – the relation between life and sentience. We explore this question by introducing and expanding on “vivaciousness”, a term we coined to describe the turbulent, flexible exploration-stabilization processes inherent in the living condition, as well as addressing the related concepts of Umwelt and selfhood. We then consider the question of the adequacy of unlimited associative learning (UAL) as an evolutionary transition marker (ETM) of minimal consciousness (rather than as a marker of a complex form of sentience), and the possible precursors of sentience. The engagement with these broad themes is entangled with a discussion of evolutionary transitions, constitutive emergence and the function/s of consciousness. The suggestions of our commentators, urging us to explore new concepts and new avenues of research within the framework of a richer view of evolution are then discussed. We end by briefly considering what we regard as a conceptual lacuna, which is leading to the indiscriminate use of the term “sentience” and which awaits further investigation. (shrink)

Learning from contemporary natural, formal, and social sciences, especially from current biology, as well as from humanities, particularly contemporary philosophy of nature, requires updates of our old definitions of cognition and intelligence. The result of current insights into basal cognition of single cells and evolution of multicellular cognitive systems within the framework of extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) helps us better to understand mechanisms of cognition and intelligence as they appear in nature. New understanding of information and processes of physical (morphological) (...) computation contribute to novel possibilities that can be used to inspire the development of abiotic cognitive systems (cognitive robotics), cognitive computing and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

From folk tales to movies, stories possess features which naturally suit them to contribute to the growth of virtue. In this article I show that the fictional exemplars help the learner to grasp the moral importance of internal states and resolves a tension between existing kinds of exemplars discussed by virtue ethicists. Stories also increase the information conveyed by virtue terms and aid the growth of prudence. Stories can provide virtuous exemplars, inform learners as to the nature of the virtues (...) and offer practice in developing situational judgement. As such they are a significant resource for virtue ethics and moral education. (shrink)

According to Kuhn's speciation analogy, scientific specialisation is fundamentally analogous to biological speciation. In this paper, we extend Kuhn's original language-centred formulation of the speciation analogy, to account for episodes of scientific specialisation centred around methodological differences. Building upon recent views in evolutionary biology about the process of speciation by genetic divergence, we will show how these methodology-centred episodes of scientific specialisation can be understood as cases of specialisation driven by value divergence. We will apply our model of specialisation by (...) value divergence to an episode of methodology-centred scientific specialisation: the emergence of molecular biology. (shrink)

Evolutionary biology is paying increasing attention to the mechanisms that enable phenotypic plasticity, evolvability, and extra‐genetic inheritance. Yet, there is a concern that these phenomena remain insufficiently integrated within evolutionary theory. Understanding their evolutionary implications would require focusing on phenotypes and their variation, but this does not always fit well with the prevalent genetic representation of evolution that screens off developmental mechanisms. Here, we instead use development as a starting point, and represent it in a way that allows genetic, environmental (...) and epigenetic sources of phenotypic variation to be independent. We show why this representation helps to understand the evolutionary consequences of both genetic and non‐genetic phenotype determinants, and discuss how this approach can instigate future areas of empirical and theoretical research. (shrink)

In recent years, biologists and philosophers of science have argued that evolutionary theory should incorporate more seriously the idea of ‘reciprocal causation.’ This notion refers to feedback loops whereby organisms change their experiences of the environment or alter the physical properties of their surroundings. In these loops, in particular niche constructing activities are central, since they may alter selection pressures acting on organisms, and thus affect their evolutionary trajectories. This paper discusses long-standing problems that emerge when studying such reciprocal causal (...) processes between organisms and environments. By comparing past approaches to reciprocal causation from the early twentieth century with contemporary ones in niche construction theory, we identify two central reoccurring problems: All of these approaches have not been able to provide a conceptual framework that allows maintaining meaningful boundaries between organisms and environments, instead of merging the two, and integrating experiential and physical kinds of reciprocal causation. By building on case studies of niche construction research, we provide a model that is able to solve these two problems. It allows distinguishing between mutually interacting organisms and environments in complex scenarios, as well as integrating various forms of experiential and physical niche construction. (shrink)

This paper investigates the reception and discussion of Jakob von Uexküll’s biological theory by two German thinkers of his time, Helmuth Plessner and Kurt Goldstein. It demonstrates how their bio-philosophical perspectives are on the one hand indebted to Uexküll’s theory and, on the other, critical of its tendency to excessively harmonize the relationship between living beings and their environment. This original critical reading of the _Umweltlehre_ is rooted in ambiguities within Uexküll’s own thought - between a dynamic conception of the (...) organism-environment relationship and the idea of "conformity to a plan" -,, which is here examined in the second section. In the third and fourth sections we will then focus on Plessner and Goldstein respectively, demonstrating how for these two authors the harmony between organism and environment is not an original state, but only reveals itself against the background of a tension; as such, it can only be partial, unstable and always changing. The two thinkers avoid the rigid alternative between Darwin’s concept of adaptation (_Anpassung_) and Uexküll’s “fitting into” (_Einpassung_) by theorizing the ideal state of the relationship between organism and environment in terms of “adequacy” (_Adäquatheit_) and “adaptability” (_Adaptiertheit_). Between organism and environment there is neither absolute separation nor perfect harmony, but rather a gap which can never be definitively fixed. (shrink)

In this paper I seek to show how cultural niche construction theory offers the potential to extend the human evolutionary story beyond the Pleistocene, through the Neolithic, towards the kind of very large-scale societies in which we live today. The study of the human past has been compartmentalised, each compartment using different analytical vocabularies, so that their accounts are written in mutually incompatible languages. In recent years social, cognitive and cultural evolutionary theories, building on a growing body of archaeological evidence, (...) have made substantial sense of the social and cultural evolution of the genus Homo. However, specialists in this field of studies have found it difficult to extend their kind of analysis into the Holocene human world. Within southwest Asia the three or four millennia of the Neolithic period at the beginning of the Holocene represents a pivotal point, which saw the transformation of human society in the emergence of the first large-scale, permanent communities, the domestication of plants and animals, and the establishment of effective farming economies. Following the Neolithic, the pace of human social, economic and cultural evolution continued to increase. By 5000 years ago, in parts of southwest Asia and northeast Africa there were very large-scale urban societies, and the first large-scale states. An extension of cultural niche construction theory enables us to extend the evolutionary narrative of the Pleistocene into the Holocene, opening the way to developing a single, long-term, evolutionary account of human history. (shrink)

In a macroevolutionary timescale, evolvability itself evolves. Lineages are sorted based on their ability to generate adaptive novelties, which leads to the optimization of their genotype-phenotype map. The system of translation of genetic or epigenetic changes to the phenotype may reach significant horizontal and vertical complexity, and may even exhibit certain aspects of learning behaviour. This continuously evolving semiotic system probably enables the origin of complex yet functional and internally compatible adaptations. However, it also has a second, “darker”, side. As (...) was pointed out by several authors, the same process gradually reduces the probability of the origination of significant evolutionary novelties. In a similar way to the evolution of societies, teachings, or languages, in which the growing number of internal linkages gradually solidifies their overall structure and the structure or interpretation of their constitutive elements, the evolutionary potential of lineages decreases during biological evolution. Possible adaptations become limited to small “peripheral” modifications. According to the Frozen Evolution theory, some of the proximate causes of this “macroevolutionary freezing” are more pronounced or present exclusively in sexual lineages. Sorting based on the highest evolvability probably leads to the establishment of certain structural features of complex organisms, e.g. the modular character of their development and morphology. However, modules also “macroevolutionary freeze” whereas the hypothetical “thawing” of modules or their novel adaptive combinations becomes rarer and rarer. Some possible ways out of this dead end include the rearrangement of individual development, e.g. neoteny, radical simplification, i.e. sacculinization, and transition to a higher level of organization, e.g. symbiosis or symbiogenesis. The evolution of evolvability is essentially a biosemiotic process situated at the intersection of the genocentric modern synthesis and the evo-devo-centric extended synthesis. Therefore, evolvability may eventually connect these three not necessarily contradictory approaches. (shrink)

En este artículo analizaré algunos puntos de convergencia entre la filosofía transhumanista y la crítica filosófica contemporánea al antropocentrismo. Para ello distinguiré entre un tipo de programa normativo fuerte y uno débil en el transhumanismo. El argumento central reside en que la normatividad fuerte en el discurso transhumanista, al suponer que es posible seleccionar exclusivamente las características “propiamente humanas” para ser conservadas en el estadio post-humano, se basa en una concepción pre-darwiniana de la especie humana, lo cual posee implicancias tanto (...) epistemológicas como éticas. (shrink)

Biological evolution is often viewed narrowly as a change of morphology or allele frequency in a sequence of generations. Here I pursue an alternative informational concept of evolution, as preservation, advance, and emergence of functional information in natural agents. Functional information is a network of signs that are used by agents to preserve and regulate their functions. Functional information is preserved in evolution via complex interplay of copying and construction processes: the digital components are copied, whereas interpreting subagents together with (...) scaffolds, tools, and resources, are constructed. Some of these processes are simple and invariant, whereas others are complex and contextual. Advance of functional information includes improvement and modification of already existing functions. Although the genome information may change passively and randomly, the interpretation is active and guided by the logic of agent behavior and embryonic development. Emergence of new functions is based on the reinterpretation of already existing information, when old tools, resources, and control algorithms are adopted for novel functions. Evolution of functional information progressed from protosemiosis, where signs correspond directly to actions, to eusemiosis, where agents associate signs with objects. Language is the most advanced form of eusemiosis, where the knowledge of objects and models is communicated between agents. (shrink)

In the article “Why are we our brain: enactivism put into question” (this volume), Pereira and collaborators raise a battery of criticisms of enactivism, which is a family of approaches in the cognitive sciences that gives centrality to the body and to the autonomous action of organisms in explanations of their cognitive processes. The authors’ attacks target some central concepts of the enactivist proposal, such as practical knowledge, embodiment (or corporeity) and sensory-motor regularities. I argue that the criticisms by Pereira (...) et al. do not proceed for different reasons: some assume what they want to prove, others give excessive weight to intuitions about fictional scenarios and, finally, others attack scarecrows that do not represent the enactivist positions. None of the points I raise in defense of enactivism are new, but I consider it important to make them explicit in order to make the debate on the philosophy of cognitive sciences clearer. (shrink)

Our objective in this paper is twofold: first, we intend to address the tenability of the enactivist middle way between realism and idealism, as it is proposed in The Embodied Mind. We do so by taking the enactivist conception of bringing forth a world literally in three conceptual levels: enaction, niche construction and social construction. Based on this proposal, we claim that enactivism is compatible with the idea of an independent reality without committing to the claim that organisms have cognitive (...) access to a world composed of properties specified prior to any cognitive activity. Our second goal is to show that our literal interpretation of bringing forth a world not only sustains the legitimacy of the middle way, but it also allows us to revive the conception of evolution as natural drift—which is perhaps the least examined aspect of the original enactivist theory and is central to the understanding of cognition in an enactive way. Natural drift focuses on how structural couplings between organism and environment trigger viable pathways of maintenance and reproduction, instead of selecting the most adapted trait to a pregiven environment. Thus, although enactivists typically do not explore the consequences of their views regarding evolutionary dynamics, we show how natural drift provides a suitable starting point. (shrink)

This paper examines the nature of Hodgson and Knudsen’s version of Generalized Darwinism, asking to what extent it has explanatory force. The paper develops two criteria for potential explanatory transfer of theories between disciplines, and argues that Generalized Darwinism does not meet these. The paper proposes that Hodgson and Knudsen’s version of Generalized Darwinism is best understood as a research program aimed at modest unificationism sensu Kitcher, that provides a heuristic perspective to guide research, but does not produce actual evolutionary (...) explanations. (shrink)

This paper proposes a biosemiotic conception of theories, as non-intentional organic theories, which is based on an analysis and comparison of philosopher Norwood Russell Hanson’s account of theories and zoologist Jakob von Uexküll’s theory of organisms. It is argued that Hanson’s proposals about scientific theories and their relation to observation are semiotic in nature and that there exists a correspondence between Hanson’s depiction of the relationship between theories, observation, and reality and von Uexküll’s views on the relationship between organisms and (...) their environments. This correspondence supports an account of theories that depicts them as organic extensions of our perceptual physiology. Among the epistemological consequences of this account are the following: The kind of correspondence that is established through theories between a subject and reality is related rather to a subject’s actions than to a faithful representation of every aspect of the world, it suggests a strong emphasis on the creative aspects of knowledge acquisition, and it urges a reassessment of the evolutionary epistemology of theories. (shrink)

The value problem for knowledge is the problem of explaining why knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. The problem arises for reliabilism in particular, i.e., the externalist view that knowledge amounts to reliably acquired true belief. Goldman and Olsson argue that knowledge, in this sense, is more valuable than mere true belief due to the higher likelihood of future true beliefs (produced by the same reliable process) in the case of knowledge. They maintain that their solution works given (...) four empirical assumptions, which they claim hold “normally.” However, they do not show that their assumptions are externalistically acceptable; nor do they provide detailed evidence for their normality claim. We address these remaining gaps in Goldman and Olsson’s solution in a constructive spirit. In particular, we suggest an externalist interpretation of the assumptions such that they essentially spell out what it means for a broad range of organisms capable of belief-like representations to be epistemically adapted to their environment. Our investigation also sheds light on the circumstances in which the assumptions fail to hold and knowledge therefore fails to have extra value in Goldman and Olsson’s sense. The upshot is a deeper understanding of their solution as a contribution to naturalized epistemology and a strengthened case for its empirical validity. (shrink)

Although random mutation is central to models of evolutionary change, a lack of clarity remains regarding the conceptual possibilities for thinking about the nature and role of mutation in evolution. We distinguish several claims at the intersection of mutation, evolution, and directionality and then characterize a previously unrecognized category: complex conditioned mutation. Empirical evidence in support of this category suggests that the historically famous fluctuation test should be revisited, and new experiments should be undertaken with emerging experimental techniques to facilitate (...) detecting mutation rates within specific loci at an ultra‐high, individual base pair resolution. (shrink)

Variations in life history define key comparative and evolutionary biological questions, important for understanding the mechanisms of mammalian evolutionary divergence, developmental adaptability and plasticity. In this regard, the differences among predominantly altricial and precocial species represent a particularly significant, if still poorly understood and contested case. Here, it will be shown how the classical analysis of such ontogenetic variations, going back to the semantic biology of A. Portmann, can be expanded and synthesized with comparative physiological approaches, based on the negentropic (...) theory of ontogeny by I. A. Arshavsky and his school. In this little received but pioneering tradition, extensive comparative and experimental investigations were carried out on the role of musculoskeletal systems and stressors in driving life history variations, particularly in the altricial-precocial spectrum. As shown by Arshavsky and co-workers, by focusing on general allometric regularities, the approximations based on the classical energy rules of surface and mass offer valuable benchmarks, but also predictions that are frequently violated by the variability of physiological and metabolic scaling relationships among altricials and precocials, and thus, a complex and historical approach is needed to describe their local physiological mechanisms and systemic regularities. This paper shows how Arshavsky’s findings and framework can play an integrative role in this context, potentially helping to bridge the mainly descriptive approach of semantic morphology, as developed by Portmann’s school, with the more functional explanations predominating current ecology and life history theory. These problems can be important for biosemiotics by highlighting the contingent, activity-dependent, and surplus anabolic stress mechanisms underlying diversification in eutherian developmental systems and possibly, the epigenetic evolution of pace-of-life syndromes. (shrink)

The possible evolutionary significance of epigenetic memory and codes is a key problem for extended evolutionary synthesis and biosemiotics. In this paper, some less known original works are reviewed which highlight theoretical parallels between current evolutionary epigenetics, on the one hand, and its predecessors in the eco-physiology of higher nervous activity, on the other. Recently, these areas have begun to converge, with first evidence now indicating the possibility of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance of conditional associations in the mammalian nervous system, and (...) related findings in other taxa. This can serve as an interesting example of evolutionary code-making, where the molecular mechanisms underlying arbitrary associations between stimuli involve lasting changes in gene expression that may be transmitted epigenetically across generations, and which in some cases could be further assimilated into the genome over subsequent evolution. Although preliminary, such epigenetic scenarios would also offer an interesting, if so far overlooked parallel to earlier research carried out by one of I.P. Pavlov’s leading students, acad. P.K. Anokhin, and his colleagues, but also by eminent eco-physiologists of the time, several of whom offered arguments for the possibility of unconditional reflexes representing evolutionarily later, specialized, and reduced forms of associative reflexes, from which they may be derived. Although discarded under the growing dominance of modern synthesis, these early epigenetic investigations may deserve renewed attention in the modern context, and if further confirmed, could open essentially new perspectives on the morphofunctional evolution of the nervous system. (shrink)

Tinbergen’s classic “On Aims and Methods of Ethology” (_Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 20_, 1963) proposed four levels of explanation of behavior, which he thought would soon apply to humans. This paper discusses the need for multilevel explanation; Huxley and Mayr’s prior models, and others that followed; Tinbergen’s differences with Lorenz on “the innate”; and Mayr’s ultimate/proximate distinction. It synthesizes these approaches with nine levels of explanation in three categories: phylogeny, natural selection, and genomics (ultimate causes); maturation, sensitive period effects, and routine (...) environmental effects (intermediate causes); and hormonal/metabolic processes, neural circuitry, and eliciting stimuli (proximate causes), as a respectful extension of Tinbergen’s levels. The proposed classification supports and builds on Tinbergen’s multilevel model and Mayr’s ultimate/proximate continuum, adding intermediate causes in accord with Tinbergen’s emphasis on ontogeny. It requires no modification of Standard Evolutionary Theory or The Modern Synthesis, but shows that much that critics claim was missing was in fact part of Neo-Darwinian theory (so named by J. Mark Baldwin in _The American Naturalist_ in 1896) all along, notably reciprocal causation in ontogeny, niche construction, cultural evolution, and multilevel selection. Updates of classical examples in ethology are offered at each of the nine levels, including the neuroethological and genomic findings Tinbergen foresaw. Finally, human examples are supplied at each level, fulfilling his hope of human applications as part of the biology of behavior. This broad ethological framework empowers us to explain human behavior—eventually completely—and vindicates the idea of human nature, and of humans as a part of nature. (shrink)

This paper aims to examine the evolutionary role of affordances, that is, the possibilities for action available in our environments. There are two allegedly competing views for explaining the evolutionary role of affordances: the first is based on natural selection; the second is based on niche construction. According to the first, affordances are resources that exert selection pressure. The second view claims that affordances are ecological inheritances in the organism’s niche that are the product of a previous alteration of the (...) environment. While there seems to be a mutually exclusive definition of affordances in each of these views, I argue in this paper that the views are not competing but, rather, complementary. In this sense, affordances play the role of either resources or ecological inheritances depending on the temporal stage of the evolutionary process. I make this argument by analyzing how natural selection and niche construction affect each other even when they function independently from each other. In this light, if these two evolutionary mechanisms exert their power in parallel but at two different stages in the evolutionary history of a given econiche, then there is room to claim that affordances can be understood as both resources and ecological inheritances. This dual aspect of affordances shows their evolutionary role. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Extended Synthesis, ecological information, and biosemiotics are complementary approaches whose engagement will help us explain the organism-environment interaction at the cognitive level. The Extended Synthesis, through niche construction theory, can explain the organism-environment interaction at an evolutionary level because niche construction is a process guided by information. We believe that the best account that defines information at this level is the one offered by biosemiotics and, within all kinds of biosemiotic information available, we believe that (...) ecological information is the best candidate for making sense of the organism-environment relation at the cognitive level. This entanglement of biosemiotics, ecological information and the Extended Synthesis is promising for understanding the multidimensional character of the organism-environment reciprocity as well as the relation between evolution, cognition, and meaning. (shrink)

Mimicry is common among animals, plants, and other kingdoms of life. Humans in late capitalism, however, have devised an unique method of mimicking the signs that trigger evolutionarily-programmed instincts of their own species in order to manipulate them. Marketing and advertising are the most pervasive and sophisticated forms of known human mimicry, deliberately hijacking our instincts in order to select on the basis of one dimension only: profit. But marketing and advertising also strangely undermine their form of mimicry, deceiving both (...) the intended targets and the signaler simultaneously. Human forms of mimicry have the regular consequence of deceiving the imitator, reducing meta-cognitive awareness of the act and intentions surrounding such deception. Therefore, the deceiver in the end deceives himself as well as intended targets. Drawing on scholarship applying Niko Tinbergen’s ethological discovery of supernormal stimuli in animals to humans, this article analyzes sophisticated mass mimicry in contemporary culture, in both intended and unintended forms. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyze the debate between the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis in light of the concept of incommensurability developed by Thomas Kuhn. In order to do so, first we briefly present both the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. Then, we clarify the meaning and interpretations of incommensurability throughout Kuhn’s works, concluding that the version of this concept deployed in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is the best suited to the analysis of scientific disputes. (...) After discussing incommensurability in Kuhn’s works, we address the question of whether the Modern Synthesis and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis can be considered semantically, methodologically, and ontologically incommensurable, concluding that they can. Finally, we discuss three problems that arise from such a conclusion: firstly, what are the consequences of incommensurability; secondly, which mode of scientific change better explains this current dispute in evolutionary biology; and thirdly, whether rational theory comparison is possible given incommensurability. We suggest that the main consequence of incommensurability is profound disagreement, that the kind of scientific change that better explains the current dispute between the MS and the EES may be scientific specialization, and that incommensurability does not preclude rational theory comparison. (shrink)

In the domain of evolutionary cognitive archaeology, the early body ornaments from the Middle Stone Age/Palaeolithic are generally treated as mere by-products of an evolved brain-bound cognitive architecture selected to cope with looming social problems. Such adaptive artefacts are therefore taken to have been but passive means of broadcasting a priori envisaged meanings, essentially playing a neutral role for the human mind. In contrast to this epiphenomenalist view of material culture, postphenomenology and the Material Engagement Theory have been making a (...) case for the active role of artefacts on the count that they can actually shape and restructure the human mind. By bringing these dissenting voices together, the paper at hand employs an enactive way of thinking in order to challenge the epiphenomenalist take on early body ornaments. In fact, two variants of enactivism are presented, each advancing a unique explanation of how the engagement of early humans with body ornaments transformed their minds along the two postphenomenological categories of embodied and hermeneutic cognition. Our theoretical frameworks specifically seek to explore how early beadworks could have scaffolded the creation of semiotic categories and the development of cognitive processes. Despite relying on inherently different premises, both theories suggest that beads fostered the emergence of an epistemic apparatus which thoroughly transformed the way humans engaged with the world. Having concurred on the ornaments’ transformative effects, we ultimately conclude that the epiphenomenalist paradigm best be replaced with an enactive approach grounded on the dictates of postphenomenology and the MET. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce defined the sign as a means to communicate a form or habit embodied in the object to the interpretant, thus constraining (through a sign) the behavior of an interpreter to a limited series of effects. This is part of the process of “semiotic scaffolding” in which sign relations interlock and reinforce one another, providing directionality to the process. In biological evolutionary studies canalization is defined as the adjustment of developmental pathways by natural selection to bring about a (...) uniform result despite genetic and environmental variations. Establishing parallelism between the two concepts allows the possibility of understanding how semiotic processes introduce information from the environment resulting in canalization (and assimilation), determining “fixed” pathways to elaborate signal repertoires for particular species adapted to particular environments sensed by particular organs. This kind of sign action can produce an “encapsulation” process of the sign meaning, further affecting the meaning-making process developing in the receiver, a process affecting signal usage by animals, constraining agency of biological systems’ behavior towards a definite sequence of events or signals and providing a certain orientation of the process (“semiotic canalization”). Therefore, we can also say that signs could potentially be built by senders (i.e. by the sign-vehicle) in a sort of pre-determined way and not extracted by the receiver from a “neutral” sender. Semiotic canalization is seen as a part of a more general process of scaffolding during development, acting mainly during some information exchanges between communicating subjects, providing adaptive responses to some standard communicative situations. (shrink)

Human behavior and thought often exhibit a familiar pattern of within group similarity and between group difference. Many of these patterns are attributed to cultural differences. For much of the history of its investigation into behavior and thought, however, cognitive science has been disproportionately focused on uncovering and explaining the more universal features of human minds—or the universal features of minds in general. -/- This entry charts out the ways in which this has changed over recent decades. It sketches the (...) motivation behind the cultural turn in cognitive science, and situates some of its central findings with respect to the questions that animate it and the debates that it has inspired. Woven throughout the entry are examples of how the cognitive science of culture, and especially its elevated concern with different forms of diversity and variation, continues to influence and be influenced by philosophers. -/- One cluster of philosophical work falls within the traditional subject matter of philosophy of science, in this case of the cognitive and social sciences. Philosophers have analyzed and assessed the methods and evidence central to the scientific study of cognition and culture, and have offered conceptual scrutiny, clarification, and synthesis. Research in a second vein sees philosophers themselves contributing more directly to cognitive scientific projects, (co)constructing theories, helping build computational models, even gathering empirical data. A third kind of work is naturalistic philosophy or philosophy of nature, wherein philosophers seek to use results from the cognitive science of culture to inform or transform debates over long-standing philosophical questions, including questions about the nature of philosophy and philosophical methodology itself. (shrink)

This paper considers the prospect of moral transhumanism from the perspective of theological virtue ethics. I argue that the pursuit of goodness inherent to moral transhumanism means that there is a compelling prima facie case for moral enhancement. However, I also show that the proposed enhancements would not by themselves allow us to achieve a life of virtue, as they appear unable to create or enhance prudence, the situational judgement essential for acting in accordance with virtue. I therefore argue that (...) moral enhancement technologies should take a limited or supporting role in moral development, which I call ‘moral supplementation’. (shrink)