The proposed transdisciplinary field of ‘complexics’ would bring together allcontemporary efforts in any specific disciplines or by any researchersspecifically devoted to constructing tools, procedures, models and conceptsintended for transversal application that are aimed at understanding andexplaining the most interwoven and dynamic phenomena of reality. Our aimneeds to be, as Morin says, not “to reduce complexity to simplicity, [but] totranslate complexity into theory”.New tools for the conception, apprehension and treatment of the data ofexperience will need to be devised to complement existing (...) ones and toenable us to make headway toward practices that better fit complexictheories. New mathematical and computational contributions have alreadycontinued to grow in number, thanks primarily to scholars in statisticalphysics and computer science, who are now taking an interest in social andeconomic phenomena.Certainly, these methodological innovations put into question and againmake us take note of the excessive separation between the training receivedby researchers in the ‘sciences’ and in the ‘arts’. Closer collaborationbetween these two subsets would, in all likelihood, be much moreenergising and creative than their current mutual distance. Humancomplexics must be seen as multi-methodological, insofar as necessarycombining quantitative-computation methodologies and more qualitativemethodologies aimed at understanding the mental and emotional world ofpeople.In the final analysis, however, models always have a narrative runningbehind them that reflects the attempts of a human being to understand theworld, and models are always interpreted on that basis. (shrink)

In recent years, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has grown both in popularity and economic importance. I argue that this success is primarily the result of domestication to the dominant culture of biomedicine and is readily observable in images and metaphors of the body used both in CAM and biomedical discourse. It is suggested that this shared imagery points to a new phase in the relationship between the body and society. The domestication of CAM is further illustrated through processes of (...) dissemination and professionalization. The article concludes by discussing the domestication of CAM as a reflection of an epistemological shift in biomedicine alongside its continued hegemony. (shrink)

This article focuses on the current trends and initiatives in human capacity building in Africa. It takes as it starting point that human capacity development is essential for Africa to become an information and know-ledge society and therefore an equal partner in the global sharing of knowledge. Four knowledge areas are identified and discussed. These are education, research and development, brain drain and information and documentation drain. The paper concludes that there is a clear understanding in Africa that its future (...) lies with education and that most African leaders have a strong political will to invest in human capacity building on the continent. It is also clear that much has been done, particularly primary education. Africa will most defi-nitely benefit from this in the long run. Problem areas remain however. These are in the needed growth of research and development and how to address the brain and information drain phenomena. (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)

Capturing information means for every organism acquiring knowledge about the living and not living objects that exist in its surroundings. In this way, the “historical” concept of Umwelt, as a subjective surrounding has been recently integrated in the theory of landscape ecology where a landscape is not only a geographical entity but also a cognitive medium. The landscape may be considered a semiotic context used by the organisms to locate resources heterogeneously distributed in space and time. In particular, inside a (...) landscape there are different eco-fields defined as spatial arrangements of objects carrier of meaning that organisms utilize to track resources. Along this epistemic path the sonic component of the landscape is an important carrier of information commonly used by the majority of animal species to managing many vital functions. In particular birds, which are animals with a complex system of acoustic communication, seem to organize acoustic centers for public information. These sonic patterns (soundtopes) are characterized by a great variability in space and time and function like a special eco-field that allows species to share information about the status of resources and the dynamics of populations. The availability of such public information avoids a deeper and more expensive exploration of the environment to assess its quality. (shrink)

This article explores the usefulness of interdisciplinarity as method of enquiry by proposing an investigation of the concept of information in the light of semiotics. This is because, as Kull, Deacon, Emmeche, Hoffmeyer and Stjernfelt state, information is an implicitly semiotic term (Biological Theory 4(2):167–173, 2009: 169), but the logical relation between semiosis and information has not been sufficiently clarified yet. Across the history of cybernetics, the concept of information undergoes an uneven development; that is, information is an ‘objective’ entity (...) in first order cybernetics, and becomes a ‘subjective’ entity in second order cybernetics. This contradiction relegates the status of information to that of a ‘true’ or ‘false’ formal logic problem. The present study proposes that a solution to this contradiction can be found in Deely’s reconfiguration of Peirce’s ‘object’ (as found in his triadic model of semiosis) into ‘thing’ and ‘object’ (Deely 1981). This ontology allows one to argue that information is neither ‘true’ nor ‘false’, and to suggest that, when considered in light of its workability, information can be both true and false, and as such it constitutes an organism’s purely objective reality (Deely 2009b). It is stated that in the process of building such a reality, information is ‘motivated’ by environmental, physiological, emotional (including past feelings and expectations) constraints which are, in turn, framed by observership. Information is therefore found in the irreducible cybersemiotic process that links at once all these conditions and that is simultaneously constrained by them. The integration of cybernetics’ and semiotics’ understanding of information shows that history is the analytical principle that grants scientific rigour to interdisciplinary investigations. As such, in any attempt to clarify its epistemological stance (e.g. the semiotic aspect of information), it is argued that biosemiotics does not need only to acknowledge semiotics (as it does), but also cybernetics in its interdisciplinary heritage. (shrink)

It is common in cognitive science to equate computation (and in particular digital computation) with information processing. Yet, it is hard to find a comprehensive explicit account of concrete digital computation in information processing terms. An information processing account seems like a natural candidate to explain digital computation. But when ‘information’ comes under scrutiny, this account becomes a less obvious candidate. Four interpretations of information are examined here as the basis for an information processing account of digital computation, namely Shannon (...) information, algorithmic information, factual information and instructional information. I argue that any plausible account of concrete computation has to be capable of explaining at least the three key algorithmic notions of input, output and procedures. Whist algorithmic information fares better than Shannon information, the most plausible candidate for an information processing account is instructional information. (shrink)

In its predominant form, the understanding of the neurosciences, which stand in high public esteem, is a naturalistic one. The critique of this naturalism concerns the technical modelling of brain functions as a syntactic or control loop machine. Adequate solutions to the mind-body problem are not found in this way.

The philosophy of information (PI) is a new area of research with its own field of investigation and methodology. This article, based on the Herbert A. Simon Lecture of Computing and Philosophy I gave at Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, analyses the eighteen principal open problems in PI. Section 1 introduces the analysis by outlining Herbert Simon's approach to PI. Section 2 discusses some methodological considerations about what counts as a good philosophical problem. The discussion centers on Hilbert's famous analysis (...) of the central problems in mathematics. The rest of the article is devoted to the eighteen problems. These are organized into five sections: problems in the analysis of the concept of information, in semantics, in the study of intelligence, in the relation between information and nature, and in the investigation of values. (shrink)

This article aims to show that fundamentality is construed differently in the two most prominent strategies of analysis we find in physical science and engineering today: (1) atomistic, reductive analysis and (2) Systems analysis. Correspondingly, atomism is the conception according to which the simplest (smallest) indivisible entity of a certain kind is most fundamental; while systemism, as will be articulated here, is the conception according to which the bonds that structure wholes are most fundamental, and scale and/or constituting entities are (...) of no significance whatsoever for fundamentality. Accordingly, atomists maintain that the basic entities—the atoms—are fundamental, and together with the “external” interactions among them, are sufficient for illuminating all the features and behaviors of the wholes they constitute; whereas systemists proclaim that it is instead structural qualities of systems, that flow from internal relations among their constituents and translate directly into behaviors, that are fundamental, and by themselves largely (if not entirely) sufficient for illuminating the features and behaviors of the wholes thereby structured. Systemism, as will be argued, is consistent with the nonexistence of a fundamental “level” of nondecomposable entities, just as it is consistent with the existence of such a level. Still, systemism is a conception of the fundamental in quite different, but still ontological terms. Systemism can serve the special sciences—the social sciences especially—better than the conception of fundamentality in terms of atoms. Systemism is, in fact, a conception of fundamentality that has rather different uses—and importantly, different resonances. This conception of fundamentality makes contact with questions pertaining to natural kinds and their situation in the metaphysics of the special sciences—their situation within an order of autonomous sciences. The controversy over fundamentality is evident in the social sciences too, albeit somewhat imperfectly, in the terms of debate between methodological individualists and functionalists/holists. This article will thus clarify the difference between systemism and holism. (shrink)

Abstract: In the past, major scientific and technological revolutions, like the Copernican Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, have had profound effects, not only upon society in general, but also upon Philosophy. Today's Information Revolution is no exception. Already it has had significant impacts upon our understanding of human nature, the nature of society, even the nature of the universe. Given these developments, this essay considers some of the philosophical contributions of two "philosophers of the Information Age"—Norbert Wiener and Luciano Floridi—with (...) regard to the nature of the universe, human nature, the nature of society, and the nature of "artificial agents" such as robots, softbots, and cyborgs. (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)

The Foundation for Legal Knowledge Systems (JURIX) has, sinceits foundation in 1988, become an internationally renowned forumfor Law and Artificial Intelligence in theNetherlands. This paper is based onan intellectual review of the work of JURIX requested by theorganisation as part of its 10th anniversary in December 1997 andpresented as a keynote address at the 10th anniversary conference.It has been updated to include the following two conferences. Itapplauds the overall effort but also suggests some directions forfuture development and suggests in particular:The (...) breadth of research has been commendable, butthere is a need to move towards greater integration of systems andmigration to internet based systems. (shrink)

Modern knowledge of servo systems and computing machines makes it possible to specify a circuit that can and will induce the rules and winning moves in a game like chess when they are given only ostensibly, that is, by playing against opponents who quit when illegal or losing moves are made. Such circuits enjoy a value social in the sense that it is shared by the players.La connaissance moderne des servomécanismes et des machines à calculer permet de concevoir un circuit (...) qui pourra suivre des règles et décider les coups décisifs dans un jeu comme le jeu d'échecs tout au moins quand les coups sont joués de faÇon apparente, c'est-à-dire contre des adversaires qui abandonneront dans le cas de coups irréguliers ou de coups absurdes.De tels circuits possèdent une „valeur” sociale dans la mesure où elle est partagée par les autres joueurs.Moderne Kenntnissen im Gebiete von Folgegeraeten und Rechenmaschinen ermoeglichen es einen elektrischen Kreis aufzuwerfen, der die Regeln und gewinnbringende Zuege eines Spieles wie Schach induktiv erfassen kann und wird, wenn diese Regeln und Zuege nur ostensiv gegeben sind; d.h. indem mit Gegnern gespielt wird, die das Spiel einstellen sobald regelwidrige oder verlustbringende Zuege gemacht werden. Solche Kreise schaffen demnach einen Wert, der gesellschaftlich in dem Sinn ist, dass er auch von den Mitspielern geteilt wird. (shrink)

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)

The distinction between analog and digital representation is reexamined; it emerges that a more fundamental distinction is that between symbolic and analog simulation. Analog simulation is analyzed in terms of a (near) isomorphism of causal structures between a simulating and a simulated process. It is then argued that a core concept, naturalistic analog simulation, may play a role in a bottom-up theory of adaptive behavior which provides an alternative to representational analyses. The appendix discusses some formal conditions for naturalistic analog (...) simulation. (shrink)

Some philosophers have conflated functionalism and computationalism. I reconstruct how this came about and uncover two assumptions that made the conflation possible. They are the assumptions that (i) psychological functional analyses are computational descriptions and (ii) everything may be described as performing computations. I argue that, if we want to improve our understanding of both the metaphysics of mental states and the functional relations between them, we should reject these assumptions. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. A Historical Look at Unity 2. Field Guide to Modern Concepts of Reduction and Unity 3. Kitcher's Revisionist Account of Unification 4. Critics of Unity 5. Integration Instead of Unity 6. Reduction via Mechanisms 7. Case Studies in Reduction and Unification across the Disciplines.

This paper provides an epistemological and methodological analysis of the recent practice of using neural language models to simulate brain language processing. It is argued that, on the one hand, this practice can be understood as an instance of the traditional simulative method in artificial intelligence, following a mechanistic understanding of the mind; on the other hand, that it modifies the simulative method significantly. Firstly, neural language models are introduced; a study case showing how neural language models are being applied (...) in cognitive neuroscience for simulative purposes is then presented; after recalling the main epistemological features of the simulative method in artificial intelligence, it is finally highlighted how the epistemic opacity of neural language models is tackled by using the brain itself to simulate the neural language model and to test hypotheses about it, in what is called here a co-simulation. (shrink)

Based on Kolchinsky and Wolpert’s work on the semantics of autonomous agents, I propose an application of Mathematical Logic and Probability to model cognitive processes. In this work, I will follow Bateson’s insights on the hierarchy of learning in complex organisms and formalize his idea of applying Russell’s Type Theory. Following Weaver’s three levels for the communication problem, I link the Kolchinsky–Wolpert model to Bateson’s insights, and I reach a semantic and conceptual hierarchy in living systems as an explicative model (...) of some adaptive constraints. Due to the generality of Kolchinsky and Wolpert’s hypotheses, I highlight some fundamental gaps between the results in current Artificial Intelligence and the semantic structures in human beings. In light of the consequences of my model, I conclude the paper by proposing a general definition of knowledge in probabilistic terms, overturning de Finetti’s Subjectivist Definition of Probability. (shrink)

The Politics of Orientation provides the first substantial exploration of a surprising theoretical kinship and its rich political implications, between Gilles Deleuze's philosophy and the sociological systems theory of Niklas Luhmann. Through their shared theories of sense, Hannah Richter draws out how the works of Luhmann and Deleuze complement each other in creating worlds where chaos is the norm and order the unlikely and yet remarkably stable exception. From the encounter between Deleuze and Luhmann, Richter develops a novel take on (...) postfoundational ontology where subjects and societies unfold in self-productive relations of sense against a background of complexity. The Politics of Orientation breaks and rebuilds theoretical alliances by reading core concepts and thinkers of Continental Philosophy, from Leibniz to Whitehead and Marx, through this encounter. Most importantly, the book puts Luhmann and Deleuze to work to offer urgently needed insight into the rise of post-truth populism. In our complex democratic societies, Richter argues, orientation against complexity has become the ground of political power, privileging the simplistic narratives of the populist right. (shrink)

The grammatical manipulation and production of language is a great deceiver. We have become habituated to accept the use of well-constructed language to indicate intelligence, understanding and, consequently, intention, whether conscious or unconscious. But we are not always right to do so, and certainly not in the case of large language models (LLMs) like ChapGPT, GPT-4, LLaMA, and Google Bard. This is a perennial problem, but when one understands why it occurs, it ceases to be surprising that it so stubbornly (...) persists. This paper will have three main sections. In the Introduction I will say a little about language, its aetiology, and useful sub-divisions into natural and cultural. In the second section I will explain the current situation with regard to large language models and fill in the background debates which set the problem up as one of increased complexity rather than one of a qualitatively different kind from narrow or specific AI. In the third section I will present the case for the missing phenomenological background and why it is necessary for the co-creation of shared meaning in both natural and cultural language, and I will conclude this section by presenting a rationale for why this situation arises and will continue to arise. Before we do any of this, I need to clarify one point: I do not wish to challenge the ascription of artificial general intelligence (AGI) to LLMs, indeed I think agnosticism is best in this respect, but I do challenge the more serious, and erroneous, ascription of understanding, intention, reason, and consciousness to them. And so, I am making two points: an epistemological one about why we fall into error in our ascription of a mental life to LLMs, and an ontological one about the impossibility of LLMs being or becoming conscious. (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)

The humanities and social sciences (HSS) are being turned upside down by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and their very existence could be threatened. These sciences are being profoundly destabilised by a dual process of naturalisation of social phenomena and fetishisation of numbers, accentuated by the development of AI (part 1). Both STM (science, technology, medicine) and HSS are facing major epistemological challenges, but for the latter they carry the risk of marginalisation (part 2). The humanities and social sciences remain (...) the best equipped to question the social construct represented by the development of AI. However, this essential approach is not enough. We need to ask ourselves: how can the HSS reintroduce interpretation when they have less and less control over how data is put together? Only a balanced partnership between STM and HSS is likely to meet all these challenges (part 3). Using the case of education, which has long been at the forefront of developments in other sectors of social life, we would like to show how and on what priority issues such a partnership can be built (part 4). (shrink)

An ontology of information belies our common intuitions about reality today and animates and governs both explicit scholarly study in philosophy and the sciences as well as the ideologies that are growing out of them. Transhumanism is one such technoscientific ideology that holds to a very specific ontology of information which need not be the only one on offer. This article argues that the transhumanist ontology of information exhibits gnostic and docetic religious overtones in it and that it devalues physical (...) existence. At the same time, despite claiming a rejection of supernature, hypothetical transhumanist practices (such as mind‐uploading) posit the infosphere as a kind of supernatural realm that is often set in opposition to the natural world. This article presents a critique of transhumanist conceptions of information and offers an alternative ontology of information that more adequately accounts for the distinction between the natural and supernatural as well as the integrity of the physical world. (shrink)

We are currently in the middle of the transformation from Martin Heidegger’s modern society to a society based on digital technology. In the developing digital society, humans in their current state of ‘Being’ are increasingly surrounded by systems that are networked and run based on algorithms, software, and data. These interconnected systems function, communicate, and interact in networks and driven by these algorithms, software, and data, which give them the ability to connect, calculate, and reveal. Jointly, these systems thus create (...) a new and actual reality based on their mathematical and scientific background. In the present-day digital society, humans’ actual ‘state of Being’ is increasingly framed by what the digital technology reveals to us and enables. The transition to this new digital reality conjures up more and more questions as to whether we as humans sufficiently understand the essence of digital technology and whether we as humanity have sufficient knowledge and insight to be able to analyze and fathom the essence of the new digital ecology around us. In this article, I will use Heideggerian phenomenology as a philosophy to create a framework that will allow us to, based on phenomenological research into our current ‘Dasein’ or ‘being there’, gain deeper insight into the ‘Being’ of digital technology and the ensuing development of a digital reality for humanity as a whole. (shrink)

The systems view on life and its emergence from complex chemistry has remarkably increased the scientific attention on metabolism in the last two decades. However, during this time there has not been much theoretical discussion on what constitutes a metabolism and what role it actually played in biogenesis. A critical and updated review on the topic is here offered, including some references to classical models from last century, but focusing more on current and future research. Metabolism is considered as intrinsically (...) related to the living but not necessarily equivalent to it. More precisely, the idea of “minimal metabolism”, in contrast to previous, top‐down conceptions, is formulated as a heuristic construct, halfway between chemistry and biology. Thus, rather than providing a complete or final characterization of metabolism, our aim is to encourage further investigations on it, particularly in the context of life's origin, for which some concrete methodological suggestions are provided. Also see the video abstract here:https://youtu.be/DP7VMKk2qpA. (shrink)

The emergence of conflicts between environmental safety incidents and protection rights generates sizeable political costs, which endangers the legitimacy of the government as well as political security and stability. This article further examines the role of political costs in environmental issues. First, political costs in relation to environmental issues are defined. An equilibrium strategic analysis is then presented using an evolutionary game model in which the strategic behavioral choices of government, enterprises, and citizens are investigated by embedding political costs in (...) the environmental governance system. Furthermore, the small-signal model was innovatively applied to simulate and analyze the stability of political costs under different equilibrium strategies in the system. The results show the following. Pubic behavior and government are the dominant factors that impact stability and instability, respectively. Public behavior is the core element that affects political cost consumption. When political costs are extremely depleted, the public will neglect economic interests, turn toward environmental interests, and choose the negative participation strategy, which destabilizes the system. The political cost signal at the optimal equilibrium point not only warns the government not to take the desperate action of concealing information asymmetry but also allows the government to let go of its hands to deal with the environmental issues. Corresponding policy recommendations are proposed. (shrink)

U radu se ispituju filozofski temelji dubokog učenja. Ukazivanjem na početke dubokog učenja i umjetnog neurona kao formalnog modela ljudskog neurona moguće je tvrditi da je umjetna inteligencija razvijena i prije njezinog službenog imenovanja te da je bila snažno povezana s propozicionalnom logikom. Imajući na umu neke velike zastoje u razvoju neuronskih mreža, pokazujemo da se dubinsko učenje može tretirati kao teorija umjetne inteligencije te da potpada pod paradigmu umjetne inteligencije jer je za nju dovoljno samo učenje jer se inteligentno (...) ponašanje uči. Dakle, duboko učenje je filozofski ili epistemološki pristup u kojem se mora zagovarati radikalni empirizam. Prema tome, ne samo da ne postoji ništa u umu što nije bilo u osjetilima, već u umu ne postoji ništa što se ne može naučiti. (shrink)

Both biosemiotics and evolutionary epistemology are concerned with how knowledge evolves. (Applied) Evolutionary Epistemology thereby focuses on identifying the units, levels, and mechanisms or processes that underlie the evolutionary development of knowing and knowledge, while biosemiotics places emphasis on the study of how signs underlie the development of meaning. We compare the two schools of thought and analyze how in delineating their research program, biosemiotics runs into several problems that are overcome by evolutionary epistemologists. For one, by emphasizing signs, biosemiotics (...) needs to delineate a semiotic threshold, which is a problem not encountered by evolutionary epistemologists. Instead, the latter recognizes that all organisms are knowers that evolve knowledge, which they recognize to extend toward phenomena produced by organisms such as behavior, cognition, language, culture, science, and technology. Secondly, biosemiotics attempts at continuing adaptationist notions on how organisms relate to their environment, while especially Applied Evolutionary Epistemology comes to redefine the nature of the organism–environment relationship in such a way that it recognizes the spatiotemporal boundedness of existence, which in turn makes adaptationist accounts obsolete. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the physical content of the main information concepts in the history of physics of the last seven decades. I argue that this physical character should be evaluated not by appealing to analytical-linguistic confusion (Timpson 2013) or to the usefulness of its applicability (Lombardi et al. 2016), but properly from its capacity to allow us to acquire significant knowledge about the physical world. After systematically employing this epistemic criterion of physical significance I will conclude by rejecting (...) the main strategies of ontological inflation and physical content of the main information concepts in the classical thermal physics literature. (shrink)

Departing from popular imaginations around artificial intelligence (AI), this article engages in the I in the AI acronym but from perspectives outside of mathematics, computer science and machine learning. When intelligence is attended to here, it most often refers to narrow calculating tasks. This connotation to calculation provides AI an image of scientificity and objectivity, particularly attractive in societies with a pervasive desire for numbers. However, as is increasingly apparent today, when employed in more general areas of our messy socio-cultural (...) realities, AI- powered automated systems often fail or have unintended consequences. This article will contribute to this critique of AI by attending to Nicholas of Cusa and his treatment of intelligence. According to him, intelligence is equally dependent on an ability to handle the unknown as it unfolds in the present moment. This suggests that intelligence is organic which ties Cusa to more contemporary discussions in tech philosophy, neurology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive sciences in which it is argued that intelligence is dependent on having—and acting through—an organic body. Understanding intelligence as organic thus suggests an oxymoronic relationship to artificial. (shrink)

In contrast to China’s efforts to upgrade its system of governance around a stupefying amount of data collection and electronic scoring, countries committed to democracy and human rights did not upgrade their systems. Instead, those countries ended up with surveillance capitalism. It is vital for the survival of those ideas about governance to perform such an upgrade. This paper aims to contribute to that goal. I propose a framework of epistemic actorhood in terms of four roles and characterize digital lifeworlds (...) and what matters about them both in terms of how they fit in with Max Tegmark’s distinctions among stages of life and in terms of how they generate their own episteme, the data episteme, with its immense possibilities of infopower. Epistemic rights that strengthen existing human rights – as part of a fourth generation of rights – are needed to protect epistemic actorhood in those roles. In the long run, we might well need a new kind of right, the right to the exercise of genuinely human intelligence. (shrink)

This paper examines two parallel discussions of scientific modeling which have invoked experimentation in addressing the role of models in scientific inquiry. One side discusses the experimental character of models, whereas the other focuses on their exploratory uses. Although both relate modeling to experimentation, they do so differently. The former has considered the similarities and differences between models and experiments, addressing, in particular, the epistemic value of materiality. By contrast, the focus on exploratory modeling has highlighted the various kinds of (...) exploratory functions of models in the early stages of inquiry. These two perspectives on modeling are discussed through a case study in the field of synthetic biology. The research practice in question explores biological control by making use of an ensemble of different epistemic means: mathematical models and simulations, synthetic genetic circuits and intracellular measuring devices, and finally electronic circuits. We argue that the study of exploratory modeling should trace the ways different epistemic means, in different materialities, are being combined over time. Finally, the epistemic status of such novel investigative objects as synthetic genetic circuits is evaluated, with the conclusion that they can function as both experiments and models. (shrink)

ArgumentIn this comparative historical analysis, we will analyze the intellectual tendency that emerged between 1946 and 1956 to take advantage of the popularity of communication theory to develop a kind of informational epistemology of statistical mechanics. We will argue that this tendency results from a historical confluence in the early 1950s of certain theoretical claims of the so-called English School of Information Theory, championed by authors such as Gabor (1956) or MacKay (1969), and from the attempt to extend the profound (...) success of Shannon’s ([1948] 1993) technical theory of sign transmission to the field of statistical thermal physics. As a paradigmatic example of this tendency, we will evaluate the intellectual work of Léon Brillouin (1956), who, in the mid-fifties, developed an information theoretical approach to statistical mechanical physics based on a concept of information linked to the knowledge of the observer. (shrink)

Current research on the origin of DNA and RNA, viruses, and mobile genetic elements prompts a re-evaluation of the origin and nature of genetic material as the driving force behind evolutionary novelty. While scholars used to think that novel features resulted from random genetic mutations of an individual’s specific genome, today we recognize the important role that acquired viruses and mobile genetic elements have played in introducing evolutionary novelty within the genomes of species. Viral infections and subviral RNAs can enter (...) the host genome and persist as genetic regulatory networks. Persistent viral infections are also important to understand the split between great apes and humans. Nearly all mammals and nonhuman primates rely on olfaction, i.e., chemoreception as the basis of the sense of smell for social recognition, group membership, and the coordination of organized social life. Humans, however, evolved other means to establish social bonding, because several infection waves by endogenous retroviruses caused a loss of odor receptors in human ancestors. The human independence from olfaction for social recognition was in turn one driver of the rather abrupt human transition to dependence on visual information, gesture production, and facial recognition that are at the roots of language-based communication. (shrink)

Scholars have explored the influence of the field of cybernetics on scientific thought and disciplines. However, from the inception of the field, ‘‘cyberneticians’’ had explicitly envisioned applications reaching beyond the purview of scientific disciplines; cybernetics was remarkable for its portability and potential application in a wide variety of contexts. This article explores connections between cybernetics and experimental music from 1950-1980, which was a period of experimentation with electronic techniques in recording, composition, and sound production and manipulation. Examples include musicians, engineers, (...) instrument builders, composers, and scientists in collaboration with musicians who invoked cybernetic themes in their work. These uses of cybernetics were more diverse than accounts of cybernetics within the sciences suggest, presenting a major difficulty in addressing cybernetics as a homogeneous or monolithic discourse. In particular, cybernetic discourse in music often exhibited themes of openness and indeterminacy, rather than the ‘‘command and control’’ of the ‘‘closed world.’’. (shrink)

The term ‘information’ is used extensively in biology, cognitive science and the philosophy of consciousness in relation to the concepts of ‘meaning’ and ‘causation’. While ‘information’ is a term that serves a useful purpose in specific disciplines, there is much to the concept that is problematic. Part 1 is a critique of the stance that information is an independently existing entity. On this view, and in biological contexts, systems transmit, acquire, assimilate, decode and manipulate it, and in so doing, generate (...) meaning. I provide a detailed proposal in Part 2 that supports the claim that it is the dynamic form of a system that qualifies the informational nature of meaningful interactive engagement, that is, that information is dependent on dynamic form rather than that it exists independently. In Part 3, I reflect on the importance of the distinction between the independent and dependent stances by looking specifically at the implications for how we might better interpret causation and emergence. (shrink)

The concept of information and its relation to biosemiotics is a major area of contention among biosemioticians. Biosemioticians influenced by von Uexküll, Sebeok, Bateson and Peirce are critical of the way the concept as developed in information science has been applied to biology, while others believe that for biosemiotics to gain acceptance it will have to embrace information science and distance biosemiotics from Peirce’s philosophical work. Here I will defend the influence of Peirce on biosemiotics, arguing that information science and (...) biosemiotics as these were originally formulated are radically opposed research traditions. Failure to appreciate this will undermine the challenge of biosemiotics and other anti-reductionist traditions to mainstream science with its reductionist ambition to explain everything through physics. However, for this challenge to be successful, it will be necessary to respond to criticisms of Peircian ideas, jettisoning ideas that are no longer defensible and integrating ideas allied to his anti-reductionist agenda. Here I will argue that the natural philosophy of Gilbert Simondon, offering a searching critique of the application of the new concept of information and cybernetics to the life and human sciences, provides the means to defend and advance Peirce’s core ideas and thereby defend post-reductionist biosemiotics. (shrink)

One can construct a mapping between Hilbert space and the class of all logic if the latter is defined as the set of all well-orderings of some relevant set (or class). That mapping can be further interpreted as a mapping of all states of all quantum systems, on the one hand, and all logic, on the other hand. The collection of all states of all quantum systems is equivalent to the world (the universe) as a whole. Thus that mapping establishes (...) a fundamentally philosophical correspondence between the physical world and universal logic by the meditation of a special and fundamental structure, that of Hilbert space, and therefore, between quantum mechanics and logic by mathematics. Furthermore, Hilbert space can be interpreted as the free variable of "quantum information" and any point in it, as a value of the same variable as "bound" already axiom of choice. (shrink)

Philosophy already has a long history of coming to terms with artificial intelligence. But if the future of the concept is indeed inseparable from artificial languages and ubiquitous computing...

Pervasive digitality reveals us as analogue creatures that are unprepared for a world and a logic generated increasingly through automation. Promulgated by capitalism, digitality has created a new form of alienation, one far more powerful and comprehensive than that envisaged by either Marx or Lukács in the analogue-industrial age. Digital alienation-through-automation is the central process in our digital post-modernity. The effects reach increasing registers and spheres of culture, economy and politics. This essay considers the effects within the production of knowledge (...) within higher education. Through a critique of Clayton Christensen’s concept of ‘disruptive technologies’, it develops the argument that knowledge produced in our higher institutions of learning suffer from two forms of ‘knowledge capture’. The first and most comprehensive is knowledge increasingly oriented toward instrumental outcomes, generated in vocationally oriented and market-pressured contexts, and produced by the general-sector institutions; second is knowledge, much of it profound and potentially world-changing—in economics and climate science in the cases discussed here. These are generated in both prestigious general-sector universities, and in the elite Ivy League and Russell Group universities but are unable to gain traction with an ascendant and alien post-Westphalian, post-modern and post-Enlightenment political context—created by a globalising digitality. I argue that unless we recognise our analogue essence, and that this has been alienated by digital automation, then the aporias of digitality, with knowledge production an important element, then our institution of higher learning will continue to produce much valuable knowledge that has diminishing practical (political) effect. (shrink)