This paper presents a view of nature as a network of infocomputational agents organized in a dynamical hierarchy of levels. It provides a framework for unification of currently disparate understandings of natural, formal, technical, behavioral and social phenomena based on information as a structure, differences in one system that cause the differences in another system, and computation as its dynamics, i.e. physical process of morphological change in the informational structure. We address some of the frequent misunderstandings regarding the natural/morphological computational (...) models and their relationships to physical systems, especially cognitive systems such as living beings. Natural morphological infocomputation as a conceptual framework necessitates generalization of models of computation beyond the traditional Turing machine model presenting symbol manipulation, and requires agent-based concurrent resource-sensitive models of computation in order to be able to cover the whole range of phenomena from physics to cognition. The central role of agency, particularly material vs. cognitive agency is highlighted. (shrink)

Chinese environmentalists have called for an ecological civilization. To promote this, ecology is defended as the core science embodying process metaphysics, and it is argued that as such ecology can serve as the foundation of such a civilization. Integrating hierarchy theory and Peircian semiotics into this science, it is shown how “community” and “communities of communities,” in which communities are defined by their organization to promote the common good of their components, have to be recognized as central concepts not only (...) of ecology, but of life itself. This perspective is used to defend Lovelock’s “Gaia” hypothesis and the call of Prugh, Costanza, and Daly for strong democracy. An ethics and political philosophy is sketched based on “eco-poiesis” or “home-making,” which is equated with augmenting the life of communities, both human and non-human. (shrink)

Who are we, and how do we relate to each other? Luciano Floridi, one of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy, argues that the explosive developments in Information and Communication Technologies is changing the answer to these fundamental human questions. As the boundaries between life online and offline break down, and we become seamlessly connected to each other and surrounded by smart, responsive objects, we are all becoming integrated into an "infosphere". Personas we adopt in social media, for example, feed (...) into our 'real' lives so that we begin to live, as Floridi puts in, "onlife". Following those led by Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud, this metaphysical shift represents nothing less than a fourth revolution. "Onlife" defines more and more of our daily activity - the way we shop, work, learn, care for our health, entertain ourselves, conduct our relationships; the way we interact with the worlds of law, finance, and politics; even the way we conduct war. In every department of life, ICTs have become environmental forces which are creating and transforming our realities. How can we ensure that we shall reap their benefits? What are the implicit risks? Are our technologies going to enable and empower us, or constrain us? Floridi argues that we must expand our ecological and ethical approach to cover both natural and man-made realities, putting the 'e' in an environmentalism that can deal successfully with the new challenges posed by our digital technologies and information society. (shrink)

The concept of an operator is used in a variety of practical and theoretical areas. Operators, as both conceptual and physical entities, are found throughout the world as subsystems in nature, the human mind, and the manmade world. Operators, and what they operate, i.e., their substrates, targets, or operands, have a wide variety of forms, functions, and properties. Operators have explicit philosophical significance. On the one hand, they represent important ontological issues of reality. On the other hand, epistemological operators form (...) the basic mechanism of cognition. At the same time, there is no unified theory of the nature and functions of operators. In this work, we elaborate a detailed analysis of operators, which range from the most abstract formal structures and symbols in mathematics and logic to real entities, human and machine, and are responsible for effecting changes at both the individual and collective human levels. Our goal is to find what is common in physical objects called operators and abstract mathematical structures, with the name operator providing foundations for building a unified but flexible theory of operators. The paper concludes with some reflections on functionalism and other philosophical aspects of the ‘operation’ of operators. (shrink)

The advent of quantum mechanics in the early 20 th Century had profound consequences for science and mathematics, for philosophy (Schrödinger), and for logic (von Neumann). In 1968, Putnam wrote that quantum mechanics required a revolution in our understanding of logic per se. However, applications of quantum logics have been little explored outside the quantum domain. Dummett saw some implications of quantum logic for truth, but few philosophers applied similar intuitions to epistemology or ontology. Logic remained a truth-functional ’science’ of (...) correct propositional reasoning. Starting in 1935, the Franco-Romanian thinker Stéphane Lupasco described a logical system based on the inherent dialectics of energy and accordingly expressed in and applicable to complex real processes at higher levels of reality. Unfortunately, Lupasco’s fifteen major publications in French went unrecognized by mainstream logic and philosophy, and unnoticed outside a Francophone intellectual community, albeit with some translations into other Romance languages. In English, summaries of Lupasco’s logic appeared ca. 2000, but the first major treatment and extension of his system was published in 2008 (see Brenner 2008). This paper is a further attempt to establish Lupasco’s concepts as significant contributions to the history and philosophy of logic, in line with the work of Gödel, general relativity, and the ontological turn in philosophy. (shrink)

Under the impact of information technology and the information sciences, major changes are occurring in both science and philosophy that constitute an informational turn. The recently developed Philosophy of Information has integrated the unique dualistic ontological properties of information, and scientific rationality can now be seen to include an interactive relationship between science and philosophy. Information, in particular Information Science is thus part of the structure, and not just of the content, of philosophy. In this mode of knowledge development, science (...) transforms philosophy and philosophy can critique both science and itself. I see a process of convergence taking place that is leading to a Unified Science-Philosophy of Information, a system of disciplines of which the Philosophy of Information is a part, and Information Science achieves an additional dimension based on this fundamental philosophical stance. I argue further that a proper new Philosophy of Science would be an informational metaphilosophy in that a Unified Science-Philosophy of Information includes both a new content of Science and new dynamics of the relations between a science and its philosophy. (shrink)

Antinomicity is not necessarily dependent on negation; there is a more general conception of antinomicity based on the fundamental idea of opposition. To study this fact is indispensable to show first that truth and falsity are independent of assertion and negation. Then it can be seen that antinomies can be found everywhere, and that some single categories are in intrinsic opposition with themselves while others are opposed to one another in pairs. An antinomic ‘manifesto’ concludes the work.

The technological advances of contemporary society have outpaced our moral understanding of the problems that they create. How will we deal with profound ecological changes, human cloning, hybrid people, and eroding cyberprivacy, just to name a few issues? In this book, Lorenzo Magnani argues that existing moral constructs often cannot be applied to new technology. He proposes an entirely different ethical approach, one that blends epistemology with cognitive science. The resulting moral strategy promises renewed dignity for overlooked populations, both of (...) today and of the future. (shrink)

In the most general if unconventional terms, science is the study of how man is part of the universe. Philosophy is the study of man’s ideas of the universe and how man differs from the rest of the universe. It has of course been recognized that philosophy and science are not totally disjointed. Science is in any case not a monolithic entity but refers to knowledge as the results of reasoning and both invasive and non-invasive experiment. We argue that the (...) philosophy of science, in studying the foundations, methods and implications of science and the link between philosophy and science, must now take into account the impact of the rapidly developing science and philosophy of information. We suggest that the philosophy of information is in fact a metaphilosophy, since informational processes operate in all the sciences and their philosophies. The simplest definition of (a) metaphilosophy is that of a set of statements about (a) philosophy, and any definition of a metaphilosophy thus requires one of philosophy and of the task of philosophy as well. According to Sellars, “the aim of philosophy is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term”. In this paper, we focus on the recursive thought underlying those statements as real processes, occurring both in and between the fundamental and the meta-level. We propose a non-standard logic, Logic in Reality, as the logic of those processes. The metaphilosophy of information is thus a framework for talking about the scientific aspects of philosophy and the philosophical aspects of science. Both Logic in Reality and the metaphilosophy of information provide a basis for understanding the physical and epistemological dynamics of existence, that is, from where the properties of things come that enable both them and the concepts of them to contrast, conflict and ultimately “hang together”. We conclude that the current convergence of science and philosophy under the influence of information science constitutes a revolution in philosophy, that is, in how science and philosophy are done. Many of the issues discussed in the metaphilosophy of information may thus be viewed as part of an emerging informational metaphilosophy of science. (shrink)