One is occasionally reminded of Foucault's proclamation in a 1970 interview that "perhaps, one day this century will be known as Deleuzian." Less often is one compelled to update and restart with a supplementary counter-proclamation of the mathematician, David Lindley: "the twenty-first century would be a Bayesian era..." The verb tenses of both are conspicuous. // To critically attend to what is today often feared and demonized, but also revered, deployed, and commonly referred to as algorithm(s), one cannot avoid the (...) mathematical and philosophical legacies of probability. // But attending to these probabilistic or Bayesian legacies must include an undeniable theological legacy in which they remain entangled. // We are not, today, discovering quirky theological metaphors in contemporary technics. It's the other way around. The technologies are mere metaphors of past theologies. (shrink)

The primary focus of this project is the silent and subvocal speech-recognition interface unveiled in 2018 as an ambulatory device wearable on the neck that detects a myoelectrical signature by electrodes worn on the surface of the face, throat, and neck. These emerge from an alleged “intending to speak” by the wearer silently-saying-something-to-oneself. This inner voice is believed to occur while one reads in silence or mentally talks to oneself. The artifice does not require spoken sounds, opening the mouth, or (...) any explicit or external movement of the lips. The essay then considers such subvocal “speech” as a mode of writing or saying and the interior of the mouth or oral cavity as its writing surface. It briefly revisits discussions of telepathy to recontextualize Heidegger’s warning against enframing language exclusively within calculative technics and physiology, which he suggests is detrimental to Mundarten (mouth-modes of regional dialects). It closes in reconsideration of Husserl’s phenomenology of language and meaning in Ideas as it might apply to subvocal speech-recognition interfaces. It suggests ways by which the electrophysiology that the device detects and deciphers (as an alleged intention of a presumed natural language unspoken vocally or aloud) might supplement Husserl’s insinuation of the Leiblichkeit of language through a self-stamping extraction of an extension of meaning. (shrink)

Throughout most of the 20th century, analytical and reductionist approaches have dominated in biological, social, and humanistic sciences, including linguistics and communication. We generally believed we could account for fundamental phenomena in invoking basic elemental units. Although the amount of knowledge generated was certainly impressive, we have also seen limitations of this approach. Discovering the sound formants of human languages, for example, has allowed us to know vital aspects of the ‘material’ plane of verbal codes, but it tells us little (...) about significant aspects of their social functions. I firmly believe, therefore, that alongside a linguistics that looks ‘inward’ there should also be a linguistics that looks ‘outward’, or one even that is constructed ‘from the outside’, a linguistics that I refer to elsewhere as ‘holistic’ though it could be identified by a different name. My current vision is to promote simultaneously the perspective that goes from the part to the whole and that which goes from the whole to the parts, i.e., both from the top down and from the bottom up. This goal is shared with other disciplines which recognize that many phenomena related to life are interwoven, self-organising, emergent and processual. Thus, we need to re-examine how we have conceived of reality, both the way we have looked at it and the images we have used to talk about it. Several approaches now grouped under the label of complexity have been elaborated towards this objective of finding new concepts and ways of thinking that better fit the complex organisation of facts and events. (shrink)

Much of the contemporary thought about ecology begins with the questioning of the human exceptionality. By means of this, anthropocentrism is rejected and replaced by a post-humanist framework. In this context, Martin Heidegger‘s oeuvre is credited for its search of alternatives to humanism, particularly because of its rejection of Sartre‘s anthropocentrism. However, while post-humanisms tend to behold the role of technology positively, Heidegger‘s critiques to the technique as a consequence of the same metaphysical and anthropocentric movement are widely known. Instead (...) of considering the common Heideggerian texts about technique, in this paper I explore the relationship between Heidegger and contemporary post-humanisms from the perspective of his existential analytic. In the first place, I will briefly describe the contemporary techno-scientific context, following the insights of Wiener, Haraway and Latour. In the second place, I will consider the relationship between Dasein, cyborgs and animals, discussing the Heideggerian interpretations of Hubert Dreyfus (What Computers Can’t Do) and Steven Crowell (We Have Never Been Animals). (shrink)

The debate about the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence dates from the 1960s :741–742, 1960; Wiener in Cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine, MIT Press, New York, 1961). However, in recent years symbolic AI has been complemented and sometimes replaced by Neural Networks and Machine Learning techniques. This has vastly increased its potential utility and impact on society, with the consequence that the ethical debate has gone mainstream. Such a debate has primarily focused on principles—the (...) ‘what’ of AI ethics —rather than on practices, the ‘how.’ Awareness of the potential issues is increasing at a fast rate, but the AI community’s ability to take action to mitigate the associated risks is still at its infancy. Our intention in presenting this research is to contribute to closing the gap between principles and practices by constructing a typology that may help practically-minded developers apply ethics at each stage of the Machine Learning development pipeline, and to signal to researchers where further work is needed. The focus is exclusively on Machine Learning, but it is hoped that the results of this research may be easily applicable to other branches of AI. The article outlines the research method for creating this typology, the initial findings, and provides a summary of future research needs. (shrink)

"Brower explores the way philosophers were inspired by entomological social systems and communication to reflect on human psyche, social behavior, community organization, communication, and inter-individual relationships. His essay rehearses the swarms of insects embedded in contemporary philosophy and literary theory, not only showing how many of the major concepts (or philosophemes) in continental philosophy – sexuality, politics, thinking, time, interdependence, and language – draw lessons from the world of insects, but also illustrating again how the insect world spurred human reflection.".

The chapter provides an overview on what it means to be in a world that is uncertain, e.g., how under conditions of limited understanding any activity is an activity that designs and constructs, and how designing objects, spaces, and situations relates to the (designed) meta-world of second-order cybernetics. Designers require a framework that is open, but one that supplies ethical guidance when ‘constructing’ something new. Relating second-order design thinking to insights in philosophy and aesthetics, the chapter argues that second-order cybernetics (...) provides a response to this ethical challenge and essentially it entails a poetics of designing. //// 'A Poetics of Designing' is part of the first book-length collection of texts in Design Cybernetics. It introduces the subject from the point of view of aesthetics. Importantly, the chapter argues that second-order cybernetics circumvents the necessity for a muse inspired artist or genius as a mediator between higher spirits and life, in favour of artists and designers who have true agency. //// Cybernetics is often associated with AI, which is, however, only one of the branches that developed on the basis of the interdisciplinary research begun in the 1940s and entitled cybernetics. I hope the chapter contributes to a better understanding of the second-order cybernetics that has been conceived in close relationship with art and design from the late 60s onwards. (shrink)

The first part of the book offers a hypothetical answer to the following questions: What is intelligent behaviour? What is information? How does the intelligent subject extract energy and information from the external environment? What are the mental states? How do the mental states occur? Despite the immense diversity of disciplines, topics and issues relating to the structure and the dynamics of the nervous system, of human consciousness, of intelligence in a synchronous and evolutionary perspective, two main philosophical and theoretical (...) ideologemes stand out in the neurosciences of today: the computational and the holonomic one. They are presented in the second part of the investigation. The third part is entirely focused on the semiotic approach to the study of intelligence. Particular attention is paid to the issue of the missing link between natural causality and intelligent behaviour, to which it offers a particular reply. The fourth part is itself a summary in the perspective of the conclusions of the previous parts. (shrink)

Few concepts have created more sound and fury than the concepts of development and environment. The difficulty associated with these concepts increases exponentially when one attempts to clarify them by adding some attributes such as concrete definitions and measurements pertaining to the quantity and quality of these concepts. This essay deals with the private, for-profit corporation as the primary agent in the process of satisfying the human struggle for survival. This agent has been the epicenter of the "development-environment" issue for (...) quite some time. Further, this agent has been frequently singled out as the most important, if not the exclusive, contributor to society's inability to achieve the desired "sustainable development," whatever meaning one attaches to it. We present a framework for designing a "new" type of organization which will be environmentally sustainable. This Environmentally Sustainable Organization (ESO) resembles a living organism that pursues its own survival in an environment with finite natural resources and infinite human desires. (shrink)

There is no consensus yet on the definition of semantic information. This paper contributes to the current debate by criticising and revising the Standard Definition of semantic Information as meaningful data, in favour of the Dretske-Grice approach: meaningful and well-formed data constitute semantic information only if they also qualify as contingently truthful. After a brief introduction, SDI is criticised for providing necessary but insufficient conditions for the definition of semantic information. SDI is incorrect because truth-values do not supervene on semantic (...) information, and misinformation is not a tyoe of semantic information, but pseudo-information, that is not semantic information at all. This is shown by arguing that none of the reasons for interpreting misinformation as a type of semantic information is convincing, whilst there are compelling reasons to treat it as pseudo-information. As a consequence, SDI is revised to include a necessary truth-condition. The last section summarises the main results of the paper and indicates the important implications of the revised definition for the analysis of the deflationary theories of truth, the standard definition of knowledge and the classic, quantitative theory of semantic information. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper focuses on the opening of a discursive space: the emergence of informational and scriptural representations of life and their self-negating consequences for the construction of biological meaning. It probes the notion of writing and the book of life and shows how molecular biology's claims to a status of language and texuality undermines its own objective of control. These textual significations were historically contingent. The informational representations of heredity and life were not an outcome of the internal cognitive (...) momentum of molecular biology; they were not a logical necessity of the unravelling of the base-pairing of the DNA double-helix. They were transported into molecular biology still within the protein paradigm of the gene in the 1940s and permeated nearly every discipline in the life and social sciences. These information-based models, metaphors, linguistic, and semiotic tools which were central to the formulation of the genetic code were transported into molecular biology from cybernetics, information theory, electronic computing, and control and communication systems — technosciences that were deeply embedded with the military experiences of world war II and the Cold War. The information discourse thus became fixed in molecular biology not because it worked in the narrow epistemic sense (it did not), but because it positioned molecular biology within postwar discourse and culture, perhaps within the transition to a post-modern information-based society. (shrink)

A comment on Paul Schoemaker's target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14 (1991), p. 205-215, "The Quest for Optimality: A Positive Heuristic of Science?" (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00066140). This comment argues that the optimizing model of decision leads to an infinite regress, once internal costs of decision (i.e., information and computation costs) are duly taken into account.

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)

A number of areas of biology raise questions about what is of value in the natural environment and how we ought to behave towards it: conservation biology, environmental science, and ecology, to name a few. Based on my experience teaching students from these and similar majors, I argue that the field of environmental ethics has much to teach these students. They come to me with pent-up questions and a feeling that more is needed to fully engage in their subjects, and (...) I believe some exposure to environmental ethics can help focus their interests and goals. I identify three primary areas in which environmental ethics can con- tribute to their education. The first is an examination of who (or what) should be considered to be part of our moral community (i.e., the community to whom we owe direct duties). Is it humans only? Or does it include all sentient life? Or all life? Or ecosystems considered holistically? Often, readings implicitly assume one or more of these answers; the goal is to make the student more sensitive to these implicit claims and to get them to think about the different reasons that support them. The second area, related to the first, is the application of the different answers concerning the extent of the ethical community to real environmental issues and problems. Students need to be aware of how the different answers concerning the moral community can imply conflicting answers for how we should act in certain cases and to think about ways to move toward conflict resolution. The third area in which environmental ethics can contribute is a more conceptual one, focusing on central concepts such as biodiversity, sustainability, species, and ecosystems. Exploring and evaluating various meanings of these terms will make students more reflective and thoughtful citizens and biologists, sensitive to the implications that different conceptual choices make. (shrink)

Proponents of mechanistic explanation all acknowledge the importance of organization. But they have also tended to emphasize specificity with respect to parts and operations in mechanisms. We argue that in understanding one important mode of organization—patterns of causal connectivity—a successful explanatory strategy abstracts from the specifics of the mechanism and invokes tools such as those of graph theory to explain how mechanisms with a particular mode of connectivity will behave. We discuss the connection between organization, abstraction, and mechanistic explanation and (...) illustrate our claims by looking at an example from recent research on so-called network motifs. (shrink)

This article argues that the basic account of mechanism and mechanistic explanation, involving sequential execution of qualitatively characterized operations, is itself insufficient to explain biological phenomena such as the capacity of living organisms to maintain themselves as systems distinct from their environment. This capacity depends on cyclic organization, including positive and negative feedback loops, which can generate complex dynamics. Understanding cyclically organized mechanisms with complex dynamics requires coordinating research directed at decomposing mechanisms into parts and operations with research using computational (...) models to recompose mechanisms and determine their dynamic behavior. This coordinated endeavor yields dynamic mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

This book is conceived as an introductory text into the theory of syntactic and semantic information, and information flow.

Putting robots on the battlefield is clearly appealing for policymakers. Why risk human lives, when robots could take our place, and do the dirty work of killing and dying for us? Against this, I argue that robots will be unable to win the kind of wars that we are increasingly drawn into. Modern warfare tends towards asymmetric conflict. Asymmetric warfare cannot be won without gaining the trust of the civilian population; this is ‘the hearts and minds’, in the hackneyed phrase (...) from counter-insurgency manuals. I claim that the very feature which makes it attractive to send robots to war in our place, the absence of risk, also makes it peculiarly difficult for humans to trust them. Whatever the attractions, sending robots to war in our stead will make success in counter-insurgency elusive. Moreover, there is ethical reason to be relieved at this conclusion. For if war is potentially costly, then this does much to ensure that it will be a choice only of last resort, in accordance with the traditional doctrine of jus ad bellum. In this instance, morality and expediency— fortunately— coincide. (shrink)

Current organizational communication theorists and practitioners seek to remedy organizational ills by advancing democracy within the workplace. Specifically, organizational democracy has been introduced with a variety of goals in mind: improving representation, increasing job satisfaction, improving productivity, and reducing costs. Although democracy emerges in myriad forms, theorists are still uncertain as to how to involve employees in the process and produce observable results. In this article, recent developments in complexity theory are invoked to both illuminate and resolve problems on the (...) perspective of workplace democracy. The article closes by showing how complexity theory concepts can be used to encourage democratic practices in organizations. Ultimately, complexity theory is used to shed light on the processes surrounding the considerable problem solving and experimentation required to implement democratic practices. (shrink)

"Complexity" is a catchword of certain extremely popular and rapidly developing interdisciplinary new sciences, often called accordingly the sciences of complexity. It is often closely associated with another notably popular but ambiguous word, "information"; information, in turn, may be justly called the central new concept in the whole 20th century science. Moreover, the notion of information is regularly coupled with a key concept of thermodynamics, viz. entropy. And like this was not enough it is quite usual to add one more (...) at present extraordinarily popular notion, namely chaos, and wed it with the abovementioned concepts. It is my aim in this paper to critically analyse this conceptual mess from a logical and philosophical point of view concentrating on the concepts of complexity and information and the question concerning the true relation between them. (shrink)

Abstract: In this article I argue that the best way to understand the information turn is in terms of a fourth revolution in the long process of reassessing humanity's fundamental nature and role in the universe. We are not immobile, at the centre of the universe (Copernicus); we are not unnaturally distinct and different from the rest of the animal world (Darwin); and we are far from being entirely transparent to ourselves (Freud). We are now slowly accepting the idea that (...) we might be informational organisms among many agents (Turing), inforgs not so dramatically different from clever, engineered artefacts, but sharing with them a global environment that is ultimately made of information, the infosphere. (shrink)

I describe the emergence of Floridi’s philosophy of information (PI) and information ethics (IE) against the larger backdrop of Information and Computer Ethics (ICE). Among their many strengths, PI and IE offer promising metaphysical and ethical frameworks for a global ICE that holds together globally shared norms with the irreducible differences that define local cultural and ethical traditions. I then review the major defenses and critiques of PI and IE offered by contributors to this special issue, and highlight Floridi’s responses (...) to especially two central problems – the charge of relativism and the meaning of ‹entropy’ in IE. These responses, conjoined with several elaborations of PI and IE offered here by diverse contributors, including important connections with the naturalistic philosophies of Spinoza and other major Western and Eastern figures, thus issue in an expanded and more refined version of PI and IE – one still facing important questions as well as possibilities for further development. (shrink)

It remains to summarize the contributions which each of the three disciplines discussed here is making toward the development of a science of man. "Significs" makes a study of the effects on human behavior of the linguistic aspects of the evaluative process, the most distinctly human aspect of the behavior of the human organism. "Mathematical Biophysics" seeks to describe the events associated with evaluative processes in physico-mathematical terms. "Cybernetics" is discovering important invariants common to these processes and others, particularly those (...) observed in man-made machines and in situations which lend themselves to description in thermo-dynamic or statistical (order -- chaos) terms. (shrink)

An explanation for the uncertain progress of formalist linguistics is sought in an examination of the concept of syntax. The idea of analyzing language formally was made possible by developments in 20th century logic. It has been pointed out by many that the analogy between natural language and a formal system may be imperfect, but the objection made here is that the very concept of syntax, when applied to any non-abstract system of communication, is flawed as it is commonly used. (...) Syntax is properly defined with respect to an individual transformation rule that might be applied to some message. Collections of syntax rules, however, are inevitably due to categories imposed by an observer, and do not correspond to functional features found in non-abstract systems. As such, these categories should not be relied upon as aids to understanding any natural system. (shrink)

Ethologists and others studying animal behavior in a spirit are in need of a descriptive language and method that are neither anachronistically bound by behaviorist scruples nor prematurely committed to particular Just such an interim descriptive method can be found in intentional system theory. The use of intentional system theory is illustrated with the case of the apparently communicative behavior of vervet monkeys. A way of using the theory to generate data - including usable, testable data - is sketched. The (...) underlying assumptions of this approach can be seen to ally it directly with theorizing in evolutionary biology, which has recently come under attack from Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin, who castigate it as the Their arguments, which are strongly analogous to B. F, Skinner's arguments against point to certain pitfalls that attend the careless exercise of such thinking (and rival varieties of thinking as well), but do not constitute a fundamental objection to either adaptationist theorizing or its cousin, intentional system theory. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Paul Coates defends a sophisticated dispositional account which allegedly resolves the sceptical paradox developed by Kripke in his monograph on Wittgenstein's treatment of following a rule (Kripke, 1982). Coates' account appeals to a notion of 'homeostasis', unpacked as a subject's second-order disposition to maintain a consistent pattern of extended first-order dispositions regarding her linguistic behavior. This kind of account, Coates contends, provides a naturalistic model for the normativity of intentional properties and thus resolves Kripke's sceptical paradox. (...) In this paper I argue that Coates' second-order dispositional account cannot solve the sceptic's problems regarding meaning and normativity. My main contention is that in order for second-order dispositions to be able to effectively regulate the coordinated responses constitutive of first-order dispositions, those first order dispositions must be independently identifiable. Yet that's precisely what Kripke's sceptical argument calls into question. I shall also argue, in a more positive fashion, that Coates' own appeal to practical breakdowns may suggest a different —and more effective— response to the sceptic's concern. (shrink)

This paper is a philosophical reflection on how the development of science and technology can be studied better through the tradition of Islamic philosophy. This is attempted because the approach that has been used to study science and technology in the Islamic world is still centered on the process of assimilation or Islamization of Knowledge. In a critical reading of the two approaches, the problems that arise from the study of contemporary science and technology become something that is difficult to (...) anticipate. In fact, the development of science and technology is also moving very fast. This raises the question of the need for alternative approaches in the study of contemporary science and technology in the arena of Islamic Philosophy. To solve this problem, the author conducted an initial experiment that could elaborate Irfani's approach on the one hand with studies of contemporary science and technology on the other. This becomes possible with the reinterpretation of the concept of emanation that exists in the discourse of Yazdiyah's Hudhuri Science. Based on this interpretation as well as the perspective that Mishbah Yazdi has made about the help of Irfan in philosophy, the application of the Irfani approach in the study of science and technology becomes possible as part of the practice of Hudhuri Science. On a more practical level, the author also uses this Irfani approach in a scenario format to read the vision of contemporary science and technology in the NBIC discourse. (shrink)

This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society. Its nodal point is Thomas Bayes, after whom Laplace names the primal probability algorithm. It reconsiders their mathematical innovations with Laplace's providential deism and Bayes' singular theological treatise. Conceptions of divine justice one finds among probability theorists play no small part in the algorithmic data-mining and microtargeting of Cambridge Analytica. Theological traces within mathematical computation are emphasized as the vantage over large numbers shifts to weights beyond enumeration in (...) probability theory. Collateral secularizations of predestination and theodicy emerge as probability optimizes into Bayesian prediction and machine learning. The paper revisits the semiotics and theism of Peirce and a given beyond the probable in Whitehead to recontextualize the critiques of providence by Agamben and Foucault. It reconsiders datafication problems alongside Nietzschean valuations. Religiosity likely remains encoded within the very algorithms presumed purified by technoscientific secularity or mathematical dispassion. (shrink)

‘Complexics’ denotes the meta-transdisciplinary field specifically concerned with giving us suitable cognitive tools to understand the world’s complexity. Additionally, the use of the adjective ‘complexical’ would avoid the common confusion caused by the adjective ‘complex’, which belongs to everyday usage and already has its own connotations of complication and confusion. Thus, ‘complexical’ thinking and ‘complexical’ perspective would provide clearer terms, be freer of confusion, and refer more precisely to epistemic elements in contrast to the ‘complexity’ typical of many phenomena of (...) reality. In short, the world would be ‘complex’, but our way of looking at the world would be ‘complexical’. As a meta-transdiscipline, ‘complexics’ would carry on the perspective of cybernetics: “Cybernetics deals with all forms of behaviour insofar as they are regular, or determinate, or reproducible. The materiality is irrelevant… The truths of cybernetics are not conditional on their being derived from some other branch of science. Cybernetics has its own foundations” (Ashby, 1956:1). Thus, it has a distinctly transdisciplinary mission to provide concepts, schema and possibilities of thinking and representation able to express the multidimensional and systemic interwovenness and interdependence of the many, highly significant phenomena of reality that have these characteristics. On the level of theory, complexics needs to provide a set of principles, concepts and conceptual landscapes that can be applied transversally to distinct areas of knowledge and phenomena of reality, enabling us to gain a much firmer grasp of the complex aspects of their existence than we currently have. For this reason, our aim needs to be, as Morin says, not “to reduce complexity to simplicity, [but] to translate complexity into theory” (1994:315). (shrink)

-/- Shitstorms, Hate Speech oder virale Videos, die zum Klicken, Liken, Teilen bewegen: Die vernetzte Gesellschaft ist von Affekten getrieben und bringt selbst ganz neue Affekte hervor. -/- Die Beiträge des Bandes nehmen die medientechnologischen Entwicklungen unserer Zeit in den Blick und untersuchen sie aus der Perspektive einer kritischen Affekt- und Sozialphilosophie. Sie zeigen: Soziale Medien und digitale Plattformen sind nicht nur Räume des Austauschs, sie erschaffen Affektökonomien – und darin liegt auch ihre Macht. Indem sie neue Formen des sozialen (...) Umgangs stiften und bestimmen, wie wir kommunizieren, verschieben sie auch die politische Topographie. -/- Mit einem Beitrag von Antonio Negri. (shrink)

Information is a sequence of signals arranged in accordance with a certain method. In the practice of social language communication, this sequence of signals should also have meaning.

In the aftermath of World War II, the government of the United States provided considerable funding for military projects that promised to provide a technological edge during the nascent Cold War. The most famous example is likely the V-2 rocket-testing program that began in the late 1940s. The 67 rockets launched from White Sands developed a knowledge base that was critically important to the launch of the first U.S. satellite in 1958 and to the subsequent manned space program. Less well (...) known are the large-scale information technology projects, undertaken in the 1950s and early 1960s, that provided a significant catalyst for research into digital computing, information processing, and the. (shrink)

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of one of science's most pervasive and flexible metaprinciples;optimalityis used to explain utility maximization in economics, least effort principles in physics, entropy in chemistry, and survival of the fittest in biology. Fermat's principle of least time involves both teleological and causal considerations, two distinct modes of explanation resting on poorly understood psychological primitives. The rationality heuristic in economics provides an example from social science of the potential biases arising from the extreme flexibility of (...) optimality considerations, including selective search for confirming vidence, ex post rationalization, and the confusion of prediction with explanation. Commentators are asked to reflect on the extent to which optimality is an organizing principle of nature, a set of relatively unconnected techniques of science, a normative principle for rational choice and social organization, a metaphysical way of looking at the world, or something else still. (shrink)