This article offers a reading of internet-based activism or ‘hacktivism’ as a phenomenon that cannot be confined to the instrumental use of information technologies. It focuses on a subset of hacktivism – the distributed-denial-of-service attack for political ends – that aims at making an internet host unavailable to its intended users. Since the early 2000s these attacks have been increasingly conducted by means of botnets – networks of infected computers that send bogus requests to a target website without the consent (...) of their users. The capacity of botnets to engender a more-than-human politics is analyzed from two distinct theoretical angles. First, drawing from Deleuze and Guattari, the hacktivist DDoS is discussed as an assemblage of signifying and a-signifying components, voluntary and involuntary actions. Second, Gilbert Simondon’s notions of transindividuation and transduction allow for a conceptualization of hacktivism as a sociotechnical assemblage with a high degree of indetermination. (shrink)

This paper presents the notion that verbal discourse is structured, in form and contents, by metaphorical reasoning. It discusses the concept of “metaphorical network” as a framework for relating the parts of a speech act to each other, since such an act seems to cohere into a meaningful text on the basis of “domains” that deliver common concepts. The basic finding of several research projects on this concept suggest that source domains allow speakers to derive sense from a verbal interaction (...) because they interconnect the topic of discussion to culturally-meaningful images and ideas. This suggests, in turn, that language is intertwined with nonverbal systems of meaning, reflecting them in the contents of verbal messages. Overall, the concept of metaphorical networks implies that human cognition is highly associative in structure. (shrink)

ResumoNo início do século xviii, Isaac Newton publicou seu principal trabalho sobre óptica, o Opticks. Impregnado por uma perspectiva indutiva, o livro logo se tornou a principal referência para os estudos sobre a luz e as cores, sendo amplamente popularizado pelos seguidores de Newton. Neste artigo, analisamos como dois importantes livros contribuíram para essa popularização e também qual era a imagem de ciência que tencionavam propagar, o Élements de la philosophie de Newton de Voltaire e o Newtonianismo per le dame (...) de Algarotti. Será possível perceber que ambos os autores distorceram o conteúdo do livro de Newton, no intuito de propagar uma imagem idealizada das ideias newtonianas e da própria filosofia natural.In the beginning of 18th century, Newton published his main work about light and colors, the Opticks. Impregnated by an inductive perspective, the book became the major reference for the studies about light and colors, being widely popularized by Newton's followers. In this article, we analyze how two important works contributed to this process of popularization and also what image of science they intended to propagate: Voltaire's Elements of Newton's philosophie and Algarotti's Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy explain'd for the use of the ladies. We will be notice that both authors distorted the content of the Opticks, in order to propagate an idealized image of Newtonian ideas and natural philosophy itself. (shrink)

Social machines are systems formed by material and human elements interacting in a structured way. The use of digital platforms as mediators allows large numbers of humans to participate in such machines, which have interconnected AI and human components operating as a single system capable of highly sophisticated behavior. Under certain conditions, such systems can be understood as autonomous goal-driven agents. Many popular online platforms can be regarded as instances of this class of agent. We argue that autonomous social machines (...) provide a new paradigm for the design of intelligent systems, marking a new phase in AI. After describing the characteristics of goal-driven social machines, we discuss the consequences of their adoption, for the practice of artificial intelligence as well as for its regulation. (shrink)

Autonomous mechanisms have been proposed to regulate certain aspects of society and are already being used to regulate business organisations. We take seriously recent proposals for algorithmic regulation of society, and we identify the existing technologies that can be used to implement them, most of them originally introduced in business contexts. We build on the notion of ‘social machine’ and we connect it to various ongoing trends and ideas, including crowdsourced task-work, social compiler, mechanism design, reputation management systems, and social (...) scoring. After showing how all the building blocks of algorithmic regulation are already well in place, we discuss the possible implications for human autonomy and social order. The main contribution of this paper is to identify convergent social and technical trends that are leading towards social regulation by algorithms, and to discuss the possible social, political, and ethical consequences of taking this path. (shrink)

All information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of info-autopoiesis or information self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s ‘difference which makes a difference’. To highlight and illustrate the fundamental nature of the info-autopoietic process, initially, two simulations based on one-parameter feedback are presented. The first, simulates a homeostatic control mechanism (thermostat) which is representative of a mechanistic, cybernetic system with very predictable dynamics, fully dependent on an external referent. The second, simulates a homeorhetic process, (...) inherent to biological systems, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. Further, the active incorporation/interference of viral particles by prokaryotic cells and the activation of CRISPR-Cas can be understood as info-autopoiesis at the most fundamental cellular level, as well as constituting a planetary network of self-referenced information. Moreover, other examples of the info-autopoietic nature of information are presented to show the generality of its applicability. In short, info-autopoiesis is a recursive process that is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions. (shrink)

What is the function of cognition? On one influential account, cognition evolved to co-ordinate behaviour with environmental change or complexity. Liberal interpretations of this view ascribe cognition to an extraordinarily broad set of biological systems—even bacteria, which modulate their activity in response to salient external cues, would seem to qualify as cognitive agents. However, equating cognition with adaptive flexibility per se glosses over important distinctions in the way biological organisms deal with environmental complexity. Drawing on contemporary advances in theoretical biology (...) and computational neuroscience, we cash these distinctions out in terms of different kinds of generative models, and the representational and uncertainty-resolving capacities they afford. This analysis leads us to propose a formal criterion for delineating cognition from other, more pervasive forms of adaptive plasticity. On this view, biological cognition is rooted in a particular kind of functional organisation; namely, that which enables the agent to detach from the present and engage in counterfactual inference. (shrink)

… in which we pass through eleven episodes in the history of cybernetics, each episode focusing on one of its perspectives on learning. We end with a coda where we define ‘cybersocial systems’ and...

The aim of the paper is to investigate the impact of the Greek language on modern legal languages in the United Kingdom and United States of America. The focus is placed on terms with the prefix cyber- of Greek origin that have recently enriched the English legal languages in connection with the fact that certain new phenomena have been regulated by laws as a result of the development of new technologies. Therefore, the authors have investigated the occurrence of terms with (...) the prefix cyber- in legislation and other legal texts. Apart from the analysis of borrowings in the English legal languages, the authors have also investigated the occurrence of equivalent terms in Greek and Cypriot legislation and other genres of legal texts. Furthermore, the analysis involved the investigation of the occurrence of terms with the analysed prefix cyber- in European Union legislation and terminological databases to find out whether the borrowings may become internationalisms of Greek origin. Furthermore, the authors have also investigated whether for those terms with a prefix of Greek origin there are synonyms in the languages under scrutiny of non-Greek origin. (shrink)

This study explores the ethical attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions of a sampling of political science students in Taiwan. It investigates their intentions toward observing ethics in the area of digital rights, on topics such as the freedom of expression, freedom of association, equal access to information, confidentiality, security, and protection of intellectual property while using computers. Based on preliminary studies, a questionnaire was designed and distributed to 660 political science and public administration students throughout colleges in Taiwan. Data collected from (...) 440 valid samples have been analyzed using structural equation modeling to test the three sets of hypotheses made by the researchers in the framework of the theory of planned behavior. Findings show attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavior control of the respondents all have positive impacts on the personal observation of information ethics. In this regard, altruism, the secondary group, and the sense of security have greater influence than egoism, the primary group, and the consideration of self-efficacy. Implications of these findings and recommendations for cultivating computer ethics in Taiwan and elsewhere are discussed. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is regarded in the context of the tasks that are delegated to it during the development of technical projects and the features of the implementation of tasks that must be performed in real time without the possibility of interruption. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that artificial intelligence sees as its main task the formalisation of decision-making with little or no human involvement. The basis of the methodological search are biological and prognostic methods. The (...) current stage of development of socio-humanitarian technologies, and in particular, systems with artificial intelligence, prompts people to conduct such socio-technical projects, for the implementation of which the properties of the human biological brain are no longer enough. The result of research on artificial intelligence is the desire to understand the work of the human brain, to reveal the secrets of human consciousness and the problem of creating machines with a certain level of human intelligence. The novelty of the study is determined by the fact that the understanding of artificial intelligence is primarily aimed at creating an environment that can distinguish artificial intelligence from the entire array of technological devices not only as a platform of knowledge and program code. The practical significance of the study is determined by the necessity for standardisation and the formation of attitudes and the acceptability of the use of artificial intelligence in tasks that will subsequently affect social development. (shrink)

As higher education is currently undergoing a radical transformation throughout Europe, philological studies face challenges from both inside and outside the discipline, some of which put into question the very existence of the field. This article investigates whether this crisis can also be seen as an opportunity for a profound rethinking of the field, not only necessary for its survival but also more effective with regards to its original goals in the context of a humanistic education. The author sees the (...) advent of digital technologies and new concepts of textuality as a positive development and draws on her experience in virtual teaching at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya , seeking for new conceptual frameworks through which the quality of literary teaching and learning in higher education may be improved. (shrink)

This paper explores the functional role of noise in synthetic biology and its relation to the concept of randomness. Ongoing developments in the field of synthetic biology are pursuing the re-organisation and control of biological components to make functional devices. This paper addresses the distinction between noise and randomness in reference to the functional relationships that each may play in the evolution of living and/or synthetic systems. The differentiation between noise and randomness in its constructive role, that is, between noise (...) as a perturbation in routine behaviours and noise as a source of variability that cells may exploit, indicates the need for a clarification and rectification of the conflicting uses of the notion of noise in the studies of the so-called noise biology. (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)

ResumoNo início do século xviii, Isaac Newton publicou seu principal trabalho sobre óptica, o Opticks. Impregnado por uma perspectiva indutiva, o livro logo se tornou a principal referência para os estudos sobre a luz e as cores, sendo amplamente popularizado pelos seguidores de Newton. Neste artigo, analisamos como dois importantes livros contribuíram para essa popularização e também qual era a imagem de ciência que tencionavam propagar, o Élements de la philosophie de Newton de Voltaire e o Newtonianismo per le dame (...) de Algarotti. Será possível perceber que ambos os autores distorceram o conteúdo do livro de Newton, no intuito de propagar uma imagem idealizada das ideias newtonianas e da própria filosofia natural.In the beginning of 18th century, Newton published his main work about light and colors, the Opticks. Impregnated by an inductive perspective, the book became the major reference for the studies about light and colors, being widely popularized by Newton's followers. In this article, we analyze how two important works contributed to this process of popularization and also what image of science they intended to propagate: Voltaire's Elements of Newton's philosophie and Algarotti's Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy explain'd for the use of the ladies. We will be notice that both authors distorted the content of the Opticks, in order to propagate an idealized image of Newtonian ideas and natural philosophy itself. (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)

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)

This article discusses some``historical milestones'' in computer ethics, aswell as two alternative visions of the futureof computer ethics. Topics include theimpressive foundation for computer ethics laiddown by Norbert Wiener in the 1940s and early1950s; the pioneering efforts of Donn Parker,Joseph Weizenbaum and Walter Maner in the1970s; Krystyna Gorniak's hypothesis thatcomputer ethics will evolve into ``globalethics''; and Deborah Johnson's speculation thatcomputer ethics may someday ``disappear''.

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)

This paper offers some insights and clarifications of the paramount role that Mexico has had in the forging of first-order cybernetics. Our account starts with Arturo Rosenblueth as a key intellectual figure in the foundation and formation of the field. After revisiting a historical context of people and places, we proceed to a cultural and media archeological investigation that helps us obtain new insights into the ongoing effort to intertwine the complex intellectual networks across different countries in Latin America, North (...) America, and Europe. We then present cases and first-hand interviews to discuss the legacy of cybernetics in Mexico around institutions where Rosenblueth was affiliated, mainly the Institute of Cardiology and, later on, the CINVESTAV at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional. We claim that subjective affinities are as important as common scientific goals to establish and keep connections alive, necessary to the development of a research field. As the active compound in spicy peppers, capsaicin represents a local component to the definition of cybernetics. Ultimately, the paper aims to contribute to the research on the importance of cybernetics in Latin America. (shrink)

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

Recent Darwin scholarship has provided grounds for recognising the Origin as a literary as well as a scientific achievement. While Darwin was an acute observer, a gifted experimentalist and indefatigable theorist, this essay argues that it was also crucial to his impact that the Origin transcended the putative divide between the scientific and the literary. Analysis of Darwin's development as a writer between his journal-keeping on HMS Beagle and his construction of the Origin argues the latter draws on the pattern (...) of the Romantic or Kantian sublime. The Origin repeatedly uses strategies which challenge the natural-theological appeal to the imagination in conceiving nature. Darwin's sublime coaches the Origin's readers into a position from which to envision nature that reduces and contains its otherwise overwhelming complexity. As such, it was Darwin's literary achievement that enabled him to fashion a new 'habit of looking at things in a given way' that is the centrepiece of the scientific revolution bearing his name. (shrink)

Recent Darwin scholarship has provided grounds for recognising the Origin as a literary as well as a scientific achievement. While Darwin was an acute observer, a gifted experimentalist and indefatigable theorist, this essay argues that it was also crucial to his impact that the Origin transcended the putative divide between the scientific and the literary. Analysis of Darwin’s development as a writer between his journal-keeping on HMS Beagle and his construction of the Origin argues the latter draws on the pattern (...) of the Romantic or Kantian sublime. The Origin repeatedly uses strategies which challenge the natural-theological appeal to the imagination in conceiving nature. Darwin’s sublime coaches the Origin’s readers into a position from which to envision nature that reduces and contains its otherwise overwhelming complexity. As such, it was Darwin’s literary achievement that enabled him to fashion a new ‘habit of looking at things in a given way’ that is the centrepiece of the scientific revolution bearing his name. (shrink)

This article takes a genealogical approach to the problem of affective communication that we find coalescing around the phenomenon of ‘affective transfer’ identified in experiences such as voice-hearing, telepathy and hypnotic suggestion. These experiences breach the boundaries between the self and other, inside and outside, and material and immaterial, and make visible some of the central issues that are important in re-thinking affect, relationality and embodiment. The article will attempt to re-engage the problematic of subjectivity by asking what a turn (...) to affect entails within such technologies of listening and attention. This is particularly important when such turning or opening to affect engenders a conversation with traumatic memories, albeit a conversation that does not occur primarily in a verbal register. The key focus will be on the marginalized status of telepathic modalities of affective transfer throughout the histories of the development of the psychological sciences. The article uses this as a platform to consider the connections between what is occluded or excluded from the psychological sciences, and what is being silenced within work on affect taking form across the humanities. Taking us back to the practice of telepathy in the 19th century and the problem of hypnotic suggestion in the mid 20th century (the Macy Conferences), the article discloses how both function as carriers of what is being overlooked and silenced in the engagement by many affect scholars with the knowledge-practices of the psychological and neurosciences. (shrink)

Biological regulation is what allows an organism to handle the effects of a perturbation, modulating its own constitutive dynamics in response to particular changes in internal and external conditions. With the central focus of analysis on the case of minimal living systems, we argue that regulation consists in a specific form of second-order control, exerted over the core regime of production and maintenance of the components that actually put together the organism. The main argument is that regulation requires a distinctive (...) architecture of functional relationships, and specifically the action of a dedicated subsystem whose activity is dynamically decoupled from that of the constitutive regime. We distinguish between two major ways in which control mechanisms contribute to the maintenance of a biological organisation in response to internal and external perturbations: dynamic stability and regulation. Based on this distinction an explicit definition and a set of organisational requirements for regulation are provided, and thoroughly illustrated through the examples of bacterial chemotaxis and the lac-operon. The analysis enables us to mark out the differences between regulation and closely related concepts such as feedback, robustness and homeostasis. (shrink)

In this article an epistemological framework is proposed in order to integrate the emergentist thought with systemic studies on biological autonomy, which are focused on the role of organization. Particular attention will be paid to the role of the observer’s activity, especially: (a) the different operations he performs in order to identify the pertinent elements at each descriptive level, and (b) the relationships between the different models he builds from them. According to the approach sustained here, organization will be considered (...) as the result of a specific operation of identification of the relational properties of the functional components of a system, which do not necessarily coincide with the intrinsic properties of its structural constituents. Also, an epistemological notion of emergence—that of “complex emergence”—will be introduced, which can be defined as the insufficiency, even in principle, of a single descriptive modality to provide a complete description of certain classes of systems. This integrative framework will allow us to deal with two issues in biological and emergentist studies: (1) distinguishing the autonomy proper of living systems from some physical processes like those of structural stability and pattern generation, and (2) reconsidering the notion of downward causation not as a direct or indirect influence of the whole on its parts, but instead as an epistemological problem of interaction between descriptive domains in which the concept of organization proposed and the observational operations related to it play a crucial role. (shrink)

(1999). Information self‐organization and consciousness—towards a holoinformational theory of consciousness. World Futures: Vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 309-327.

Information is a peculiar quantity. Unlike matter and energy, which are conserved by the laws of physics, the aggregation of knowledge from many sources can in fact produce more information (synergy) or less (redundancy) than the sum of its parts. This feature can endow groups with problem‐solving strategies that are superior to those possible among noninteracting individuals and, in turn, may provide a selection drive toward collective cooperation and coordination. Here we explore the formal properties of information aggregation as a (...) general principle for explaining features of social organization. We quantify information in terms of the general formalism of information theory, which also prescribes the rules of how different pieces of evidence inform the solution of a given problem. We then show how several canonical examples of collective cognition and coordination can be understood through principles of minimization of uncertainty (maximization of predictability) under information pooling over many individuals. We discuss in some detail how collective coordination in swarms, markets, natural language processing, and collaborative filtering may be guided by the optimal aggregation of information in social collectives. We also identify circumstances when these processes fail, leading, for example, to inefficient markets. The contrast to approaches to understand coordination and collaboration via decision and game theory is also briefly discussed. (shrink)

In 1987, George Soros introduced his concepts of reflexivity and fallibility and has further developed and applied these concepts over subsequent decades. This paper attempts to build on Soros's framework, provide his concepts with a more precise definition, and put them in the context of recent thinking on complex adaptive systems. The paper proposes that systems can be classified along a ‘spectrum of complexity’ and that under specific conditions not only social systems but also natural and artificial systems can be (...) considered ‘complex reflexive.’ The epistemological challenges associated with scientifically understanding a phenomenon stem not from whether its domain is social, natural, or artificial, but where it falls along this spectrum. Reflexive systems present particular challenges; however, evolutionary model-dependent realism provides a bridge between Soros and Popper and a potential path forward for economics. (shrink)

Artificial life (also known as “ALife”) is a broad, interdisciplinary endeavor that studies life and life-like processes through simulation and synthesis. The goals of this activity include modelling and even creating life and life-like systems, as well as developing practical applications using intuitions and methods taken from living systems. Artificial life both illuminates traditional philosophical questions and raises new philosophical questions. Since both artificial life and philosophy investigate the essential nature of certain fundamental aspects of reality like life and adaptation, (...) artificial life offers philosophy a new perspective on these phenomena. This chapter provides an introduction to current research in artificial life and explains its philosophical implications. (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)

In many fields in the life sciences investigators refer to downward or top-down causal effects. Craver and Bechtel defended the view that such cases should be understood in terms of a constitution relation between levels in a mechanism and causation as solely an intra-level relation. Craver and Bechtel, however, provided insufficient specification as to when entities constitute a higher-level mechanism. In this paper I appeal to graph-theoretic representations of networks that are now widely employed in systems biology and neuroscience to (...) identify mechanisms with the modules that exhibit high clustering. As a result of the interconnections of nodes in these modules/mechanisms, they often exhibit complex dynamic behaviors that constrain how the individual components respond to external inputs, an important feature of cases viewed as involving top-down causation. (shrink)

Explanations of biological phenomena such as cell division, protein synthesis or circadian rhythms commonly take the form of models of the responsible mechanisms. Recently philosophers of science have attempted to analyze this practice, presenting mechanisms as organized collections of parts performing operations that together produce the phenomenon. But in some cases what researchers seek to explain is not a general phenomenon, but a specific feature of a more fine-grained phenomenon. In some of these cases, it is not the model of (...) the mechanism that performs the explanatory work. I consider a case in which the investigator offered an abstract representation of a fine-grained phenomenon to show why in had the feature in question. I consider a second case in which a researcher abstracted from the mechanism to identify a design principle that explains why the functioning mechanism exhibits a specific feature. (shrink)

As figurational sociologists and sociolinguists, we need to know that we currently find support from other fields in our efforts to construct a sociocultural science focused on interdependencies and processes, creating a multidimensional picture of human beings, one in which the brain and its mental and emotional processes are properly recognized. The paradigmatic revolutions in 20th-century physics, the contributions made by biology to our understanding of living beings, the conceptual constructions built around the theories of systems, self-organization and complexity, all (...) these implore that we reflect on social sciences paradigms in the light of the great changes in these other disciplines. The application of metaphors or theoretical images of complexity and figurational sociology in understanding language and socio-communication phenomena is of great use, since language is not an ‘object’, but a ‘complex’; it exists simultaneously in and among different domains. ‘Languaging’ and interaction are co-phenomena. The former exists within the latter, and the latter within the former. By visualizing, for instance, the different levels of linguistic structure not as separate entities but rather as united and integrated within the same theoretical frame, by seeing their functional interdependencies, by situating them in a greater multidimensionality that includes what for a long time was considered ‘external’ – the individual and his or her mind-brain, the sociocultural system, the physical world, etc. – and expanding in this way our classical view, we should be able to make important, if not essential, theoretical and practical advances. (shrink)

Meaning is important in everyday life, and each science focuses on certain ways in which reality is meaningful. This article discusses practical implications of Herman Dooyeweerd’s understanding of meaning for everyday experience, scientific theories, scientific methodology, and philosophical underpinning. It uses eight themes related to meaning in Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, which are discussed philosophically in the first article. This article ends with a case study in which the themes are applied together to understanding Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigms.

Systems Biology and the Modern Synthesis are recent versions of two classical biological paradigms that are known as structuralism and functionalism, or internalism and externalism. According to functionalism (or externalism), living matter is a fundamentally passive entity that owes its organization to external forces (functions that shape organs) or to an external organizing agent (natural selection). Structuralism (or internalism), is the view that living matter is an intrinsically active entity that is capable of organizing itself from within, with purely internal (...) processes that are based on mathematical principles and physical laws. At the molecular level, the basic mechanism of the Modern Synthesis is molecular copying, the process that leads in the short run to heredity and in the long run to natural selection. The basic mechanism of Systems Biology, instead, is self-assembly, the process by which many supramolecular structures are formed by the spontaneous aggregation of their components. In addition to molecular copying and self-assembly, however, molecular biology has uncovered also a third great mechanism at the heart of life. The existence of the genetic code and of many other organic codes in Nature tells us that molecular coding is a biological reality and we need therefore a framework that accounts for it. This framework is Code biology, the study of the codes of life, a new field of research that brings to light an entirely new dimension of the living world and gives us a completely new understanding of the origin and the evolution of life. (shrink)

Two critiques of simple adaptationism are distinguished: anti-adaptationism and extended adaptationism. Adaptationists and anti-adaptationists share the presumption that an evolutionary explanation should identify the dominant simple cause of the evolutionary outcome to be explained. A consideration of extended-adaptationist models such as coevolution, niche construction and extended phenotypes reveals the inappropriateness of this presumption in explaining the evolution of certain important kinds of features—those that play particular roles in the regulation of organic processes, especially behavior. These biological or behavioral ‘levers’ are (...) distinctively available for adaptation and exaptation by their possessors and for co-optation by other organisms. As a result they are likely to result from a distinctive and complex type of evolutionary process that conforms neither to simple adaptationist nor to anti-adaptationist styles of explanation. Many of the human features whose evolutionary explanation is most controversial belong to this category, including the female orgasm. (shrink)

Network concepts are omnipresent in contemporary diagnoses, management practices, social science methods and theories. Instigating a critical analysis of network concepts, this article explores the sources and relevance of networks in Foucault’s social theory. I argue that via Foucault we can trace network concepts back to cybernetics, a research programme that initiated a shift from ‘being’ to ‘doing’ and developed a new theory of regulation based on connectivity and codes, communication and circulation. This insight contributes to two debates: Firstly, it (...) highlights a neglected influence on Foucault’s theory that travelled from cybernetics via structuralism and Canguilhem into his concept of power. Secondly, it suggests that network society and governance are neither a product of neoliberalism nor of technological artefacts, such as the Internet. They rather resulted from a distinct tradition of cybernetically inspired theories and practices. (shrink)

One of the major impediments to understanding the concept of information is that the term is used to describe a number of disparate things, including a property of organized matter and messages sent from a sender to a receiver. Information is essentially an attribute of the form that matter and energy take, not of matter and energy themselves. Intrinsic information is a theoretical measure of the degree to which an entity is organized, the opposite of entropy. Meaningful information, however, involves (...) the detection of a pattern of organized matter or energy by an animate or a man-made receptor, which triggers a change in the behavior, function, or organizational structure of the receiving entity. The ability to detect and respond to meaningful information is one of the defining characteristics of living entities; the process that enables cells and organisms to receive their genetic heritage, regulate their internal milieu, and respond to changes in their environment. Although energy and information are the two fundamental causal agents in the natural world, they bring about change through completely different mechanisms. The energy involved in physical interactions is supplied by the originating entity, while the energy involved in informational interactions is provided by the recipient. There is no predictable relationship between the nature of the informational stimulus and the response it engenders, for this is primarily determined by the pattern of connections between the involved receptors and effectors that evolution and learning have fashioned. As a result, a living entity’s response to information cannot be predicted on a purely mechanical basis. The laws that describe the physical interaction of organized matter apply to the transfer of energy, not to the transfer of information. This is why biology cannot be reduced to physics. (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)

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)

The contemporary use of the term ‘complexity’ frequently indicates that it is considered a unified concept. This may lead to a neglect of the range of different theories that deal with the implications related to the notion of complexity. This paper, integrating both the English and the Latin traditions of research associated with this notion, suggests a more nuanced use of the term, thereby avoiding simplification of the concept to some of its dominant expressions only. The paper further explores the (...) etymology of ‘complexity’ and offers a chronological presentation of three generations of theories that have shaped its uses; the epistemic and socio‐cultural roots of these theories are also introduced. From an epistemological point of view, this reflection sheds light on the competing interpretations underlying the definition of what is considered as complex. Also, from an anthropological perspective it considers both the emancipatory as well as the alienating dimensions of complexity. Based on the highlighted ambiguities, the paper suggests in conclusion that contributions grounded in contemporary theories related to complexity, as well as critical appraisals of their epistemological and ethical legitimacy, need to follow the recursive feedback loops and dynamics that they constitute. In doing so, researchers and practitioners in education should consider their own practice as a learning process that does not require the reduction of the antagonisms and the complementarities that shape its own complexity. (shrink)

It is now commonplace to refer to the contemporary era as the Information Age. So common, in fact, that some take this as an indication that the Information Age is over.1 Putting aside rumors of the Information Age's untimely demise, I take up in this essay the scope and nature of information in its relation to thought. To be precise, I argue that information constitutes the contemporary image of thought. I'm taking "image of thought" here in its Deleuzian sense to (...) mean that information is no longer merely a metaphor for thinking about or describing thought; rather, information is, at bottom, the sole content of thought, and thinking is nothing other than the processing of information. We can see this tendency most... (shrink)

The popular debates about the future organization of work through artificial intelligence technologies focus on the replacement of human beings by novel technologies. In this essay, we oppose this statement by closely following what has been developed as AI technologies and analyzing how they work, specifically focusing on research that may impact work organizations. We develop this argument by showing that the recent research and developments in AI technologies focus on developing accurate and precise performance models, which in turn shapes (...) organizational patterns of work. We propose that the increased interest in the relationship between human cognition and performance will shortly bring human cognition to the focus on AI systems in workplaces. More specifically, we claim that the cognitive load measurement will shape human performance in manufacturing systems shortly. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)