The paper presents a paradoxical feature of computational systems that suggests that computationalism cannot explain symbol grounding. If the mind is a digital computer, as computationalism claims, then it can be computing either over meaningful symbols or over meaningless symbols. If it is computing over meaningful symbols its functioning presupposes the existence of meaningful symbols in the system, i.e. it implies semantic nativism. If the mind is computing over meaningless symbols, no intentional cognitive processes are available prior to (...) symbol grounding. In this case, no symbol grounding could take place since any grounding presupposes intentional cognitive processes. So, whether computing in the mind is over meaningless or over meaningful symbols, computationalism implies semantic nativism. (shrink)

Floridi and Taddeo propose a condition of “zero semantic commitment” for solutions to the grounding problem, and a solution to it. I argue briefly that their condition cannot be fulfilled, not even by their own solution. After a look at Luc Steels' very different competing suggestion, I suggest that we need to re-think what the problem is and what role the ‘goals’ in a system play in formulating the problem. On the basis of a proper understanding of computing, I (...) come to the conclusion that the only sensible ground-ing problem is how we can explain and re-produce the behavioral ability and function of meaning in artificial computational agents. (shrink)

This article reviews eight proposed strategies for solving the Symbol Grounding Problem (SGP), which was given its classic formulation in Harnad (1990). After a concise introduction, we provide an analysis of the requirement that must be satisfied by any hypothesis seeking to solve the SGP, the zero semantical commitment condition. We then use it to assess the eight strategies, which are organised into three main approaches: representationalism, semi-representationalism and non-representationalism. The conclusion is that all the strategies are semantically (...) committed and hence that none of them provides a valid solution to the SGP, which remains an open problem. (shrink)

This article is the second step in our research into the Symbol Grounding Problem (SGP). In a previous work, we defined the main condition that must be satisfied by any strategy in order to provide a valid solution to the SGP, namely the zero semantic commitment condition (Z condition). We then showed that all the main strategies proposed so far fail to satisfy the Z condition, although they provide several important lessons to be followed by any new proposal. (...) Here, we develop a new solution of the SGP. It is called praxical in order to stress the key role played by the interactions between the agents and their environment. It is based on a new theory of meaning—Action-based Semantics (AbS)—and on a new kind of artificial agents, called two-machine artificial agents (AM²). Thanks to their architecture, AM2s implement AbS, and this allows them to ground their symbols semantically and to develop some fairly advanced semantic abilities, including the development of semantically grounded communication and the elaboration of representations, while still respecting the Z condition. (shrink)

The Turing Test (TT), the Chinese Room Argument (CRA), and the Symbol Grounding Problem (SGP) are about the question “can machines think?” We propose to look at these approaches to Artificial Intelligence (AI) by showing that they all address the possibility for Artificial Agents (AAs) to generate meaningful information (meanings) as we humans do. The initial question about thinking machines is then reformulated into “can AAs generate meanings like humans do?” We correspondingly present the TT, the CRA and (...) the SGP as being about generation of human-like meanings. We model and address such possibility by using the Meaning Generator System (MGS) where a system submitted to an internal constraint generates a meaning in order to satisfy the constraint. The system approach of the MGS allows comparing meaning generations in animals, humans and AAs. The comparison shows that in order to have AAs capable of generating human-like meanings, we need the AAs to carry human constraints. And transferring human constraints to AAs raises concerns coming from the unknown natures of life and human mind which are at the root of human constraints. Implications for the TT, the CRA and the SGP are highlighted. It is shown that designing AAs capable of thinking like humans needs an understanding about the natures of life and human mind that we do not have today. Following an evolutionary approach, we propose as a first entry point an investigation about the possibility for extending a “stay alive” constraint into AAs. Ethical concerns are raised from the relations between human constraints and human values. Continuations are proposed. (This paper is an extended version of the proceedings of an AISB/IACAP 2012 presentation). (shrink)

I see four symbol grounding problems: 1) How can a purely computational mind acquire meaningful symbols? 2) How can we get a computational robot to show the right linguistic behavior? These two are misleading. I suggest an 'easy' and a 'hard' problem: 3) How can we explain and re-produce the behavioral ability and function of meaning in artificial computational agents?4) How does physics give rise to meaning?

This chapter examines a common objection to sex robots: the symbolic-consequences argument. According to this argument sex robots are problematic because they symbolise something disturbing about our attitude to sex-related norms such as consent and the status of our sex partners, and because of the potential consequences of this symbolism. After formalising this objection and considering several real-world uses of it, the chapter subjects it to critical scrutiny. It argues that while there are grounds for thinking that sex robots could (...) symbolically represent a troubling attitude toward women (and maybe children) and the norms of interpersonal sexual relationships, the troubling symbolism is going to be removable in many instances and reformable in others. What will ultimately matter are the consequences of the symbolism but these consequences are likely to be difficult to ascertain. This may warrant an explicitly experimental approach to the development of this technology. (shrink)

In ethical reflections on new technologies, a specific type of argument often pops up, which criticizes scientists for “playing God” with these new technological possibilities. The first part of this article is an examination of how these arguments have been interpreted in the literature. Subsequently, this article aims to reinterpret these arguments as symbolic arguments: they are grounded not so much in a set of ontological or empirical claims, but concern symbolic classificatory schemes that ground our value judgments in the (...) first place. Invoking symbolic arguments thus refers to how certain new technologies risk undermining our fundamental symbolic distinctions by which we organize and evaluate our interactions with the world and in society. Such symbolic distinctions, moreover, tend to be resilient against logical argumentation, mainly because they themselves form the basis on which we argue in the cultural and ethical sphere in the first place. Therefore, effective strategies to evaluate and counter these arguments require another approach, showing that these technologies either do not challenge these classifications or, if they do, how they can be accompanied by the proper actions to integrate these technologies into our society. (shrink)

Apart from what (little) OpenAI may be concealing from us, we all know (roughly) how ChatGPT works (its huge text database, its statistics, its vector representations, and their huge number of parameters, its next-word training, and so on). But none of us can say (hand on heart) that we are not surprised by what ChatGPT has proved to be able to do with these resources. This has even driven some of us to conclude that ChatGPT actually understands. It is not (...) true that it understands. But it is also not true that we understand how it can do what it can do. I will suggest some hunches about benign biases: convergent constraints that emerge at LLM scale that may be helping ChatGPT do so much better than we would have expected. These biases are inherent in the nature of language itself, at LLM scale, and they are closely linked to what it is that ChatGPT lacks, which is direct sensorimotor grounding to connect its words to their referents and its propositions to their meanings. These convergent biases are related to (1) the parasitism of indirect verbal grounding on direct sensorimotor grounding, (2) the circularity of verbal definition, (3) the mirroring of language production and comprehension, (4) iconicity in propositions at LLM scale, (5) computational counterparts of human categorical perception in category learning by neural nets, and perhaps also (6) a conjecture by Chomsky about the laws of thought. The exposition will be in the form of a dialogue with ChatGPT-4. (shrink)

As physical entities that translate symbols into physical actions, computers offer insights into the nature of meaning and agency. • Physical symbol systems, generically known as agents, link abstractions to material actions. The meaning of a symbol is defined as the physical actions an agent takes when the symbol is encountered. • An agent has autonomy when it has the power to select actions based on internal decision processes. Autonomy offers a partial escape from constraints imposed by (...) direct physical influences such as gravity and the transfer of momentum. Swimming upstream is an example. • Symbols are names that can designate other entities. It appears difficult to explain the use of names and symbols in terms of more primitive functionality. The ability to use names and symbols, i.e., symbol grounding, may be a fundamental cognitive building block. • The standard understanding of causality—wiggling X results in Y wiggling—applies to both physical causes (e.g., one billiard ball hitting another) and symbolic causes (e.g., a traffic light changing color). Because symbols are abstract, they cannot produce direct physical effects. For a symbol to be a cause requires that the affected entity determine its own response. This is called autonomous causality. • This analysis of meaning and autonomy offers new perspectives on free will. (shrink)

Kant uses the concept of the symbol to show the complicated relationship between the autonomy of beauty and its systematic function as a transition from nature to freedom, which are the two most important topics in the third Critique. Beauty’s symbolism of morality lies in the analog between aesthetic reflection and moral disposition; concretely, it lies in the purity or disinterestedness and self-legislation as negative and positive freedom in both subjective states of mind. In this scenario, beauty’s symbolism does (...) not refer to aesthetic ideas that either involve intelligent interests (in the beauty of nature) or presuppose an end (in the beauty of art); it also cannot be grounded in the supersensible substrate, which is an elevated and metaphysical principle of the judgment of taste given in the Dialectic but not the original principle of subjective purposiveness in the Analytic. With this formal relationship, beauty and morality accelerate each other in the empirical-anthological sense—but they are also not a sufficient or necessary condition for each other. Furthermore, through symbolism, taste looks toward the intelligible and serves as a transition from nature to freedom from the transcendental perspective. (shrink)

If embodied models no longer address the symbol grounding problem and a conceptual system can step in and resolve categorizations when embodied simulations fail, then perhaps the next step in theory-building is to isolate the unique contributions of embodied simulation. What is a disembodied conceptual system incapable of doing with respect to semantic processing or the categorization of smiles?

Though the study of grounding is still in the early stages, Kit Fine, in ”The Pure Logic of Ground”, has made a seminal attempt at formalization. Formalization of this sort is supposed to bring clarity and precision to our theorizing, as it has to the study of other metaphysically important phenomena, like modality and vagueness. Unfortunately, as I will argue, Fine ties the formal treatment of grounding to the obscure notion of a weak ground. The obscurity of weak (...) ground, together with its centrality in Fine’s system, threatens to undermine the extent to which this formalization offers clarity and precision. In this paper, I show how to overcome this problem. I describe a system, the logic of strict ground (LSG) and demonstrate its adequacy; I specify a translation scheme for interpreting Fine’s weak grounding claims; I show that the interpretation verifies all of the principles of Fine’s system; and I show that derivability in Fine’s system can be exactly characterized in terms of derivability in LSG. I conclude that Fine’s system is reducible to LSG. (shrink)

I modify and generalize Carnap’s notion of frameworks as a way of unpacking Goodman’s metaphor of “making worlds with symbols”. My frameworks provide, metaphorically, a way of making worlds out of symbols in as much as all our framework-bound access to the world is through frameworks that always stand to be improved in accuracy, precision, and usually both. Such improvement is characterized in pragmatist terms.

This paper establishes a sound and complete semantics for the impure logic of ground. Fine (Review of Symbolic Logic, 5(1), 1–25, 2012a) sets out a system for the pure logic of ground, one in which the formulas between which ground-theoretic claims hold have no internal logical complexity; and it provides a sound and complete semantics for the system. Fine (2012b) [§§6-8] sets out a system for an impure logic of ground, one that extends the rules of the original pure system (...) with rules for the truth-functional connectives, the first-order quantifiers, and λ-abstraction. However, no semantics has yet been provided for this system. The present paper partly fills this lacuna by providing a sound and complete semantics for a system GG containing the truth-functional operators that is closely related to the truth-functional part of the system of Fine (2012b). (shrink)

Kant says that it can be rational to accept propositions on the basis of non-epistemic or broadly practical considerations, even if those propositions include “transcendental ideas” of supersensible objects. He also worries, however, about how such ideas (of freedom, the soul, noumenal grounds, God, the kingdom of ends, and things-in-themselves generally) acquire genuine positive content in the absence of an appropriate connection to intuitional experience. How can we be sure that the ideas are not empty “thought-entities (Gedankendinge)”—that is, speculative fancies (...) that do not and perhaps even cannot have referents in reality? In this paper I argue for an account of the fundamental problem here (i.e. that it is based in a concern about whether or not the objects of such ideas are "really possible" in Kant's technical sense). I then critically evaluate Kant's three proposed solutions to the problem. The third one involves an appeal to the complicated doctrine of "symbolization" that becomes prominent in Kant's later works. -/- . (shrink)

Philosophical questions about minds and computation need to focus squarely on the mathematical theory of Turing machines (TM's). Surrogate TM's such as computers or formal systems lack abilities that make Turing machines promising candidates for possessors of minds. Computers are only universal Turing machines (UTM's)—a conspicuous but unrepresentative subclass of TM. Formal systems are only static TM's, which do not receive inputs from external sources. The theory of TM computation clearly exposes the failings of two prominent critiques, Searle's Chinese room (...) (1980) and arguments from Gödel's Incompleteness theorems (e.g., Lucas, 1961; Penrose, 1989), both of which fall short of addressing the complete TM model. Both UTM-computers and formal systems provide an unsound basis for debate. In particular, their special natures easily foster the misconception that computation entails intrinsically meaningless symbol manipulation. This common view is incorrect with respect to full-fledged TM's, which can process inputs non-formally, i.e., in a subjective and dynamically evolving fashion. To avoid a distorted understanding of the theory of computation, philosophical judgments and discussions should be grounded firmly upon the complete Turing machine model, the proper model for real computers. (shrink)

Brains, unlike artificial neural nets, use symbols to summarise and reason about perceptual input. But unlike symbolic AI, they “ground” the symbols in the data: the symbols have meaning in terms of data, not just meaning imposed by the outside user. If neural nets could be made to grow their own symbols in the way that brains do, there would be a good prospect of combining neural networks and symbolic AI, in such a way as to combine the good features (...) of each. The article argues the cluster analysis provides algorithms to perform the task, and that any solution to the task must be a form of cluster analysis. (shrink)

Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski reject expressive objections to markets on the grounds that market symbolism is culturally contingent, and contingent cultural symbols are less important than the benefits markets offer. I grant and, but I deny that these points suffice as grounds to dismiss expressive critiques of markets. For many plausible expressive critiques of markets are not symbolic critiques at all. Rather, they are critiques grounded in the idea that some market transactions embody morally inappropriate normative stances toward the (...) goods or services on offer. (shrink)

This paper offers some comments on some metaphysical and epistemological claims of theological realism from the perspective of continental philosophy of religion, thereby taking the work of Soskice and Hick as paradigmatic for this kind of philosophical theology. The first comment regards the fact that theological realism considers religious and theological propositions as ways to depict or represent reality, and hence aims to bring them as much as possible in line with scientific ones. Some contemporary French philosophers criticize such a (...) representing, depicting knowledge of God, because it encapsulates the divine reality in mundane, specifically scientific categories. eventually, theological realism runs the risk of annihilating God’s radical transcendence and reducing religion to an alternative scientific theory. The second comment tries to explore whether one can affirm God’s reality from a practical perspective, as a postulate of reason, and whether such an approach could serve as a common ground for religious and secular ways of life in times of radical pluralism. This comment begins by investigating the regulative character of Kant’s idea of God as the highest idea of reason, which not only orientates our theoretical enquiries, but also our moral actions. Although this idea is only a heuristic fiction for theoretical reason, God’s existence has to be affirmed on practical grounds, as a symbolic reality that gives orientation to people’s lives. (shrink)

The recent resurgence of the language of thought (LOT) hypothesis has drawn much attention. The history of philosophy and cognitive science has provided us with various versions of LOT. From Sellars to Fodor, theorists have offered us considerations on the vehicles, content, and functions of such a representation format. However, it’s been more than 50 years since Fodor’s publication on LOT (1975), and the resurgence suggests that we need a modern iteration of LOT to fit with recent developments in the (...) study on cognition. Therefore, in this paper, I argue that we need a middle ground between Fodor and Sellars’s views on LOT – specifically, we should abandon Fodor’s view on the vehicle and content of LOT, and we should also acknowledge that perception might involve LOT (contrary to what Sellars thought). What we should focus on is LOT representations’ format’s function, that at least some neural processes are analogous to linguistic structures, and how such a function is able to facilitate a modern situational view of cognitive representation. Having this account of LOT, we can make it a more versatile tool fitting with the other cognitive frameworks, such as the free energy principle and Bayesian inference. (shrink)

The open-domain Frame Problem is the problem of determining what features of an open task environment need to be updated following an action. Here we prove that the open-domain Frame Problem is equivalent to the Halting Problem and is therefore undecidable. We discuss two other open-domain problems closely related to the Frame Problem, the system identification problem and the symbol-grounding problem, and show that they are similarly undecidable. We then reformulate the Frame Problem as a quantum decision problem, (...) and show that it is undecidable by any finite quantum computer. (shrink)

In order to fulfil their essential roles as the bearers of truth and the relata of logical relations, propositions must be public and shareable. That requirement has favoured Platonist and other nonmental views of them, despite the well-known problems of Platonism in general. Views that propositions are mental entities have correspondingly fallen out of favour, as they have difficulty in explaining how propositions could have shareable, objective properties. We revive a mentalist view of propositions, inspired by Artificial Intelligence work on (...) perceptual algorithms, which shows how perception causes persistent mental entities with shareable properties that allow them to fulfil the traditional roles of (one core kind of) propositions. The clustering algorithms implemented in perception produce outputs which are (implicit) atomic propositions in different minds. Coordination of them across minds proceeds by game-theoretic processes of communication. The account does not rely on any unexplained notions such as mental content, representation, or correspondence (although those notions are applicable in philosophical analysis of the result). (shrink)

Embodied cognition is sweeping the planet. On a non-embodied approach, the sensory system informs the cognitive system and the motor system does the cognitive system’s bidding. There are causal relations between the systems but the sensory and motor systems are not constitutive of cognition. For embodied views, the relation to the sensori-motor system to cognition is constitutive, not just causal. This paper examines some recent empirical evidence used to support the view that cognition is embodied and raises questions about some (...) of the claims being made by supporters. (shrink)

This paper investigates the prospects of Rodney Brooks’ proposal for AI without representation. It turns out that the supposedly characteristic features of “new AI” (embodiment, situatedness, absence of reasoning, and absence of representation) are all present in conventional systems: “New AI” is just like old AI. Brooks proposal boils down to the architectural rejection of central control in intelligent agents—Which, however, turns out to be crucial. Some of more recent cognitive science suggests that we might do well to dispose of (...) the image of intelligent agents as central representation processors. If this paradigm shift is achieved, Brooks’ proposal for cognition without representation appears promising for full-blown intelligent agents—Though not for conscious agents. (shrink)

The usual way to try to ground knowing according to contemporary theory of knowledge is: We know something if (1) it’s true, (2) we believe it, and (3) we believe it for the “right” reasons. Floridi proposes a better way. His grounding is based partly on probability theory, and partly on a question/answer network of verbal and behavioural interactions evolving in time. This is rather like modeling the data-exchange between a data-seeker who needs to know which button to press (...) on a food-dispenser and a data-knower who already knows the correct number. The success criterion, hence the grounding, is whether the seeker’s probability of lunch is indeed increasing (hence uncertainty is decreasing) as a result of the interaction. Floridi also suggests that his philosophy of information casts some light on the problem of consciousness. I’m not so sure. (shrink)

Background: The United States symbolizes democracy in the new world and contributes to global prosperity. Nevertheless, incrementalism is a historically dominant national approach to public policy implementation that delays democracy and undermines human dignity. Human flourishing and national development are endangered by slow-moving democratic changes. This necessitates a social justice framework that traces the exploitation of incrementalism and the consequences of opportunity gaps. Objectives: This study aims to construct a grounded theory to address and answer the following research question: Are (...) anti-democratic concepts part of a process or strategy that hinders democratic change, and what reinforces it, if anything? Methods: Two categories emerged from a grounded theory of democratic social change. This combination of anti-democratic tenets and democratic principles led to abductive reasoning to fill the research gap. Results: The key finding was the existence of a systematic approach that led to democracy while simultaneously disempowering the same group through legal and extralegal means. Two processes hinder democracy: incrementalism and an anti-democratic demoralizing process. A constructivist social justice grounded theory was developed to analyze and evaluate public policy for barriers and facilitators of democracy. A thorough analysis and evaluation of the impact and consequences of public policy is recommended to better understand how such policies impede democracy and influence American perceptions of justice. (shrink)

The age of human civilization is given the name “the bend” based on a re-examination of the emergence of science, science theory content, and history. It is proposed that social and scientific conceptualizations of nature, reflected from perplexity involving mind matter paradox, logic and illogic, surface to be not only self defining but diverging from the course of whole nature as a result of freely applied will. Both reflexively and thoughtfully reflected assessments of the natural elements containing false notions of (...) proximity are responsible for human psychical impulse in response to naturally occurred, though abnormally caused impulse to cause suffering, resulting in the application of physical impulse to the environment. In order to expose this situation, the contents of Einsteins’ theory of relativity and Euclids’ Parallel Postulate are discussed in a perspective in which all point of reference is argued to contain specific physical attachments to emerged courses of history. A physical and conceptual (reflecting paradox of matter and mind, respectively) bend is proposed to have emerged on all levels from a unique and chronic (with respect to the age of civilization) physical problem that is conjectured to be of the same nature –i.e. a physical bend. The course of the earth civilization and nature (proposed to possess the natural feature of ‘bend’ innately) are theorized to diverge from one another as a result of freely transmittted impulse by civilization, over its’ course,originating from a natural physical disturbance. (shrink)

Meanings are present everywhere in our environment and within ourselves. But these meanings do not exist by themselves. They are associated to information and have to be created, to be generated by agents. The Meaning Generator System (MGS) has been developed on a system approach to model meaning generation in agents following an evolutionary perspective. The agents can be natural or artificial. The MGS generates meaningful information (a meaning) when it receives information that has a connection with an internal constraint (...) to which the agent is submitted. The generated meaning is to be used by the agent to implement actions aimed at satisfying the constraint. We propose here to highlight some characteristics of the MGS that could be related to items of philosophy of information. (shrink)

This book on the topic of ethics and poetry consists of contributions from different continents on the subject of applied ethics related to poetry. It should gather a favourable reception from philosophers, ethicists, theologians and anthropologists from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America and allows for a comparison of the healing power of words from various religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions. The first part of this book presents original poems that express ethical emotions and aphorism related to a philosophical questioning (...) of the grounding of our values for life. The poems are written by twelve authors coming from four continents, for whom poetic emotions are sources of artistic inspiration and that can be used for conflict resolution. In the second part, which features short essays, nine authors tackle how poems, symbolic representations, metaphorical narratives and lies impact the space of possibilities, in which we are moved to action, knowledge formation, and how we imagine the world together. (shrink)

This is the first section of a five part essay dealing with economics from the perspective of Ernst Cassirer's cultural philosophy. In this first section, I try to demonstrate how the human concern with meaning is distorted in our commercial society into a purely economic sense of reality that displaces other forms of meaning. This distortion and displacement are at the heart of the social, cognitive and spiritual dysfunctions that currently plague us. The "Leverage of Meaning" will prepare the ground (...) for the formulation of the economic as a symbolic form in order to hopefully find some guidance in Cassirer's thought for restoring economy to its rightful cultural function. (shrink)

Physical dimensions like “mass”, “length”, “charge”, represented by the symbols [M], [L], [Q], are not numbers, but used as numbers to perform dimensional analysis in particular, and to write the equations of physics in general, by the physicist. The law of excluded middle falls short of explaining the contradictory meanings of the same symbols. The statements like “m tends to 0”, “r tends to 0”, “q tends to 0”, used by the physicist, are inconsistent on dimensional grounds because “m”, “r”, (...) “q” represent quantities with physical dimensions of [M], [L], [Q] respectively and “0” represents just a number—devoid of physical dimension. Consequently, due to the involvement of the statement “q tends to 0'', where q is the test charge” in the definition of electric field leads to either circular reasoning or a contradiction regarding the experimental verification of the smallest charge in the Millikan–Fletcher oil drop experiment. Considering such issues as problematic, by choice, I make an inquiry regarding the basic language in terms of which physics is written, with an aim of exploring how truthfully the verbal statements can be converted to the corresponding physico-mathematical expressions, where “physico-mathematical” signifies the involvement of physical dimensions. Such investigation necessitates an explanation by demonstration of “self inquiry”, “middle way”, “dependent origination”, “emptiness/relational existence”, which are certain terms that signify the basic tenets of Buddhism. In light of such demonstration I explain my view of “definition”; the relations among quantity, physical dimension and number; meaninglessness of “zero quantity” and the associated logico-linguistic fallacy; difference between unit and unity. Considering the importance of the notion of electric field in physics, I present a critical analysis of the definitions of electric field due to Maxwell and Jackson, along with the physico-mathematical conversions of the verbal statements. The analysis of Jackson’s definition points towards an expression of the electric field as an infinite series due to the associated “limiting process” of the test charge. However, it brings out the necessity of a postulate regarding the existence of charges, which nevertheless follows from the definition of quantity. Consequently, I explain the notion of undecidable charges that act as the middle way to resolve the contradiction regarding the Millikan–Fletcher oil drop experiment. In passing, I provide a logico-linguistic analysis, in physico-mathematical terms, of two verbal statements of Maxwell in relation to his definition of electric field, which suggests Maxwell’s conception of dependent origination of distance and charge ) and that of emptiness in the context of relative vacuum. This work is an appeal for the dissociation of the categorical disciplines of logic and physics and on the large, a fruitful merger of Eastern philosophy and Western science. Nevertheless, it remains open to how the reader relates to this work, which is the essence of emptiness. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy overcomes the opposition between scientific optimism and Schopenhauerian pessimism with the image of a music-making Socrates, who symbolizes the aesthetic affirmation of life. This article shows how the aesthetic ideal is an illusion whose metaphysical solace undermines itself in being recognized as such, thereby ceasing to be comforting. While I agree with recent commentaries that contest the pervasive Schopenhauerian reading of The Birth, most of these commentaries still support the view that Nietzsche wishes to communicate some (...) fundamental truth about nature or meaning in life. By contrast, I argue that he treats any such truth as a cultural fiction that emerges from the poetic staging of reality, leaving us with a contradiction of appearances deprived of any intelligible ground. (shrink)

Science and mathematics continually change in their tools, methods, and concepts. Many of these changes are not just modifications but progress---steps to be admired. But what constitutes progress? This dissertation addresses one central source of intellectual advancement in both disciplines: reformulating a problem-solving plan into a new, logically compatible one. For short, I call these cases of compatible problem-solving plans "reformulations." Two aspects of reformulations are puzzling. First, reformulating is often unnecessary. Given that we could already solve a problem using (...) an older formulation, what do we gain by reformulating? Second, some reformulations are genuinely trivial or insignificant. Merely replacing one symbol with another does not lead to intellectual progress. What distinguishes significant reformulations from trivial ones? According to what I call "conceptualism" (or "conceptual empiricism"), reformulations are intellectually significant when they provide a different plan for solving problems. Significant reformulations provide inferentially different routes to the same solution. In contrast, trivial reformulations provide exactly the same problem-solving plans, and hence they do not change our understanding. This answers the second question about what distinguishes trivial from significant reformulations. However, the first question remains: what makes a new way of solving an old problem valuable? Here, a bevy of practical considerations come to mind: one formulation might be faster, less complicated, or use more familiar concepts. According to "instrumentalism," these practical benefits are all there is to reformulating. Some reformulations are simply more instrumentally valuable for meeting the aims of science than others. At another extreme, "fundamentalism" contends that a reformulation is valuable when it provides a more fundamental description of reality. According to this view, some reformulations directly contribute to the metaphysical aim of carving reality at its joints. Conceptualism develops a middle ground between instrumentalism and fundamentalism, preserving their benefits without their costs. I argue that the epistemic value of significant reformulations does not reduce to either practical or metaphysical value. Reformulations are valuable because they are a constitutive part of problem-solving. Both science and mathematics aim at solving all possible problems within their respective domains. Meeting this aim requires being able to plan for any possible problem-solving context, and this requires reformulating. By reformulating, we clarify what we need to know to solve problems. Still, one might wonder whether the value of reformulations requires underlying differences in explanatory power. According to "explanationism," a reformulation is valuable only when it provides a better explanation. Explanationism stands as a rival middle ground position to my own. However, it faces numerous counterexamples. In many cases, two reformulations provide the same explanation while nonetheless providing different ways of understanding a phenomenon. Hence, reformulating can be valuable even when neither formulation is more explanatory. Methodologically, I draw on a variety of case studies to support my account of reformulation. These range from classical mechanics to quantum chemistry, along with examples from mathematics. Symmetry arguments provide a paradigmatic example: the mathematics of symmetry groups radically recasts quantum mechanics and quantum chemistry. Nevertheless, elementary approaches exist that eschew this additional mathematical apparatus, solving problems in a more tedious but less mathematically-demanding manner. Further examples include reformulations of quantum field theory, Arabic vs. Roman numerals, and Fermat's little theorem in number theory. In each case, my account identifies how reformulations change and improve our understanding of science and mathematics. (shrink)

This essay examines the possibility that phenomenological laws might be implemented by a computational mechanism by carefully analyzing key passages from the Prolegomena to Pure Logic. Part I examines the famous Denkmaschine passage as evidence for the view that intuitions of evidence are causally produced by computational means. Part II connects the less famous criticism of Avenarius & Mach on thought-economy with Husserl's 1891 essay 'On the Logic of Signs (Semiotic).' Husserl is shown to reaffirm his earlier opposition to associationist (...) (Humean) and adaptationist (Darwinian) explanations of our thought-machine on the ground that they cannot reconstruct the notion of truth and its syntactic mental preservation in symbolic thought-trains. Part III reveals Husserl's interesting commitment to the idea that descriptive sciences necessarily transform into explanatory sciences on pain of contradicting the essence of science as a rational ideal. Since explanation in relation to phenomenology means causal explanation, and causal explanation in the form of the Denkmaschine accounts for phenomenological intuition, it is inferred that the rationally compelling ideal of explanatory science requires a computationalist reading of the subsequent logical investigations. (shrink)

During the last decades, many cognitive architectures (CAs) have been realized adopting different assumptions about the organization and the representation of their knowledge level. Some of them (e.g. SOAR [35]) adopt a classical symbolic approach, some (e.g. LEABRA[ 48]) are based on a purely connectionist model, while others (e.g. CLARION [59]) adopt a hybrid approach combining connectionist and symbolic representational levels. Additionally, some attempts (e.g. biSOAR) trying to extend the representational capacities of CAs by integrating diagrammatical representations and reasoning are (...) also available [34]. In this paper we propose a reflection on the role that Conceptual Spaces, a framework developed by Peter G¨ardenfors [24] more than fifteen years ago, can play in the current development of the Knowledge Level in Cognitive Systems and Architectures. In particular, we claim that Conceptual Spaces offer a lingua franca that allows to unify and generalize many aspects of the symbolic, sub-symbolic and diagrammatic approaches (by overcoming some of their typical problems) and to integrate them on a common ground. In doing so we extend and detail some of the arguments explored by G¨ardenfors [23] for defending the need of a conceptual, intermediate, representation level between the symbolic and the sub-symbolic one. In particular we focus on the advantages offered by Conceptual Spaces (w.r.t. symbolic and sub-symbolic approaches) in dealing with the problem of compositionality of representations based on typicality traits. Additionally, we argue that Conceptual Spaces could offer a unifying framework for interpreting many kinds of diagrammatic and analogical representations. As a consequence, their adoption could also favor the integration of diagrammatical representation and reasoning in CAs. (shrink)

This chapter presents an account of Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of the body schema as an operative intentionality that is not only opposed to, but also complexly intermingled with, the representation-like grasp of the world and one’s own body, or the body image. The chapter reconstructs Merleau-Ponty’s position primarily based on his preparatory notes for his 1953 lecture ‘The Sensible World and the World of Expression’. Here, Merleau-Ponty elaborates his earlier efforts to show that the body schema is a perceptual ground against (...) which the perceived world stands out as a complex of perceptual figures. The chapter clarifies how Merleau-Ponty’s renewed interpretation of the figure-ground structure makes it possible for him to describe the relationship between body schema and perceptual (body) image as a strictly systematic phenomenon. Subsequently, the chapter shows how Merleau-Ponty understands apraxia, sleep, and perceptual orientation as examples of dedifferentiation and subtler differentiation of the body-schematic system. The last section clarifies how such body-schematic differentiating processes give rise to relatively independent superstructures of vision and symbolic cognition which constitute our body image. It, moreover, explains how, according to Merleau-Ponty, the cognitive superstructures always need to be supported by praxic operative intentionality to maintain their full sense, even though, in some cases, they have the power to compensate for praxic deficiencies. (shrink)

The emerging contemporary natural philosophy provides a common ground for the integrative view of the natural, the artificial, and the human-social knowledge and practices. Learning process is central for acquiring, maintaining, and managing knowledge, both theoretical and practical. This paper explores the relationships between the present advances in understanding of learning in the sciences of the artificial, natural sciences, and philosophy. The question is, what at this stage of the development the inspiration from nature, specifically its computational models such as (...) info-computation through morphological computing, can contribute to machine learning and artificial intelligence, and how much on the other hand models and experiments in machine learning and robotics can motivate, justify, and inform research in computational cognitive science, neurosciences, and computing nature. We propose that one contribution can be understanding of the mechanisms of ‘learning to learn’, as a step towards deep learning with symbolic layer of computation/information processing in a framework linking connectionism with symbolism. As all natural systems possessing intelligence are cognitive systems, we describe the evolutionary arguments for the necessity of learning to learn for a system to reach humanlevel intelligence through evolution and development. The paper thus presents a contribution to the epistemology of the contemporary philosophy of nature. (shrink)

New definitions are proposed for communication and language. Communication is defined as the evolution of physical, biochemical, cellular, community, and technological information exchange. Language is defined as community communication whereby the information exchanged comprises evolving individual and group-constructed knowledge and beliefs, that are enacted, narrated, or otherwise conveyed by evolving rule-governed and meaningful symbol systems, that are grounded, interpreted, and used from within evolving embodied, cognitive, ecological, sociocultural, and technological niches. These definitions place emphasis on the evolutionary aspects of (...) communication and language, and they are here differentiated from four older paradigms that instead focus either on the referential or social aspects of language, or the informational or semantic aspects of communication. In contrast with these paradigms, the definitions proposed here for communication and language are in line with a pluralistic evolutionary worldview, one that necessitates the recognition that a multitude of units, levels, mechanisms and processes are involved in bringing forth communication and language. (shrink)

I will present the rationale followed for the conceptualization and the following development the Dual PECCS system that relies on the cognitively grounded heterogeneous proxytypes representational hypothesis. Such hypothesis allows integrating exemplars and prototype theories of categorization and has provided useful insights in the context of cognitive modelling for what concerns the typicality effects in categorization. As argued in [Chella et al., 2017] [Lieto et al., 2018b] [Lieto et al., 2018a] a pivotal role in this respect is played by the (...) use of the conceptual spaces framework and by its integration with a symbolic knowledge representation layer. (shrink)

In philosophy of language, a distinction has been proposed by Diego Marconi between two aspects of lexical competence, i.e. referential and inferential competence. The former accounts for the relation-ship of words to the world, the latter for the relationship of words among themselves. The aim of the pa-per is to offer a critical discussion of the kind of formalisms and computational techniques that can be used in Artificial Intelligence to model the two aspects of lexical competence, and of the main (...) difficulties related to the use of these computational techniques. The first conclusion of our discussion is that the dis-tinction between inferential and referential semantics is instantiated in the literature of Artificial Intelli-gence by the distinction between symbolic and connectionist approaches. The second conclusion of our discussion is that the modelling of lexical competence needs the advent of hybrid models integrating symbolic and connectionist frameworks. Our hypothesis is that Conceptual Spaces, a framework devel-oped by Gärdenfors more than fifteen years ago, can offer a lingua franca that allows to unify and gener-alize many aspects of the representational approaches mentioned above and to integrate “inferential” (=symbolic) and “referential” (=connectionist) computational approaches on common ground. (shrink)

A growing body of evidence suggests that cognition is embodied and grounded. Abstract concepts, though, remain a significant theoretical chal- lenge. A number of researchers have proposed that language makes an important contribution to our capacity to acquire and employ concepts, particularly abstract ones. In this essay, I critically examine this suggestion and ultimately defend a version of it. I argue that a successful account of how language augments cognition should emphasize its symbolic properties and incorporate a view of embodiment (...) that recognizes the flexible, multi- modal and task-related nature of action, emotion and perception systems. On this view, language is an ontogenetically disruptive cognitive technology that expands our conceptual reach. (shrink)

Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski argue in recent work that “semiotic” or “symbolic” objections to markets are unsuccessful. I counter-argue that there are indeed some semiotic limits on markets and that anti-commodification theorists are not merely expressing disgust when they disapprove of markets in certain goods on those grounds. One central argument is that, contrary to what Brennan and Jaworski claim, semiotic arguments against markets do not depend fundamentally on meanings that prevail about markets. Rather, they depend on the meanings (...) that attach to various goods, meanings that give us moral bases on which to make judgments about their prospective commodification. (shrink)

I will present the rationale followed for the conceptualization and the following development the Dual PECCS system that relies on the cognitively grounded heterogeneous proxytypes representational hypothesis [Lieto 2014]. Such hypothesis allows integrating exemplars and prototype theories of categorization as well as theory-theory [Lieto 2019] and has provided useful insights in the context of cognitive modelling for what concerns the typicality effects in categorization [Lieto, 2021]. As argued in [Lieto et al., 2018b] a pivotal role in this respect is played (...) by the use of the conceptual spaces framework and by its integration with a symbolic knowledge representation layer. (shrink)

This paper critically discusses Hacker’s reading of nonsense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus in terms of his notion of misuse, which is taken to consist in the violation of rules of logical syntax. I argue that Hacker’s reading relies on an equivocation between sign and symbol: what is ‘misused’ is a mere sign, but the verdict of nonsensicality relies on seeing it as a symbol. Although Hacker seeks to distance himself from resolute readings – according to which nonsense always consists (...) in nothing but a failure to assign meaning to one’s sentences – I argue that his own verdicts of nonsensicality have their ultimate grounds in exactly the same sort of assessment, i.e. whether meaning has been assigned to a sentence. The rules of logical syntax, contrary to his own intentions, do no real work in determining whether a sentence is nonsensical or not. (shrink)

It is very well known that from the late-1960s onwards Feyerabend began to radically challenge some deeply-held ideas about the history and methodology of the sciences. It is equally well known that, from around the same period, he also began to radically challenge wider claims about the value and place of the sciences within modern societies, for instance by calling for the separation of science and the state and by questioning the idea that the sciences served to liberate and ameliorate (...) human societies. But what is less known is how, if at all, these two sets of challenges were connected, and why Feyerabend felt it important to raise them at all. In this chapter, my aim is to explore these issues by considering why Feyerabend used radical strategies to challenge the authority of science, and what purpose, if any, they were supposed to serve. Why, for instance, did Feyerabend defend alternative medicine, psychical abilities, astrology, magic and witchcraft and why did he argue that ‘Western science’ is complicit in environmental destruction, intellectual imperialism, social oppression, and spiritual destitution. Located in their historical and political context, such defences and arguments seem peculiar, not least because science was recognised not only as a central site of the intellectual and ideological competition between the West and the Soviet Union, but also because Western victory in that site was considered inevitable. What, then, did Feyerabend think he was trying to achieve by raising radical challenges to a central component of the cultural and intellectual prestige of the Western world grounded in appeals to practices and traditions which most would regard as eccentric at best and absurd at worst? My suggestion is that Feyerabend was making a subtler point than one might suppose. For the purpose of these radical challenges was to determine if the members of Western societies would in fact honour the epistemic standards – of tolerance, critical enquiry – which were identified as being characteristic of science and definitive of the social and political values of Western liberal democracy. I suggest that Feyerabend was trying to demonstrate that scientists were, too often, guilty of the same intolerant and dogmatic attitudes which were, according to prevailing propaganda, the property of illiberal totalitarian societies. Science does not reflect the superior epistemic and political values of Western societies but are, in fact, reflective of the same vices ascribed to the Soviet Union. If that is the case, then the sciences are not symbols of our epistemic and political values, but quite the reverse, hence Feyerabend’s talk of the ‘dogmatic’, ‘totalitarian’, ‘ratiofascist’ nature of modern science. But there is a positive upshot to Feyerabend’s challenge. For even if the sciences do not yet reflect the epistemic and political values of liberal democratic Western societies, they might yet be reformed so that they are. And there is a parallel between Feyerabend’s strategy and that of many of the other radicals of the time – student activists, environmentalists, and pacifists – namely to test the commitment to tolerance and deliberative debate of the establishment by asking it to seriously engage with ideas and convictions opposed to its own. For both science and society can become ‘tyrannical’ through the same means: by exempting themselves from critical scrutiny, by promoting self-serving ‘myths’ about themselves, and by derogating and excluding alternatives, including the ‘outsider’ perspectives they offer. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Feyerabend is distinctive in virtue of his willingness to offer radical criticisms of the authority of science such that it can fulfil its legitimate ideological role – namely, of symbolising and instantiating our core epistemic and political values – such that we can offer a sincere and meaningful answer to Feyerabend’s question ‘what’s so great about science?’. (shrink)

If a problem is the collision between a system and a fact, Spinozism and German idealism’s greatest problem is the corpse. Life’s end is problematic for the denial of death’s qualitative difference from life and the affirmation of nature’s infinite purposiveness. In particular, German idealism exemplifies immortalism – the view that life is the unconditioned condition of all experience, including death. If idealism cannot explain the corpse, death is not grounded on life, which invites mortalism – the view that death (...) is the unconditioned condition of experience. In “Philosophical Letters,” Schelling critiques idealism, arguing that death symbolizes the regulative ideal of a philosophical system’s derivation, our striving for which unifies our rational activity. I interpret Schelling’s critique as explaining how death puts philosophy into question, an idea he develops in the Freedom essay and Berlin lectures. Death is not a problem to be solved by a system, but represents philosophy’s highest yet unrealizable end. (shrink)

There are two fundamental models to understanding the phenomenon of natural life. One is thecomputational model, which is based on the symbolic thinking paradigm. The other is the biologicalorganism model. The common difficulty attributed to these paradigms is that their reductive tools allowthe phenomenological aspects of experience to remain hidden behind yes/no responses (behavioraltests), or brain ‘pictures’ (neuroimaging). Hence, one of the problems regards how to overcome meth-odological difficulties towards a non-reductive investigation of conscious experience. It is our aim in (...) thispaper to show how cooperation between Eastern and Western traditions may shed light for a non-reductive study of mind and life. This study focuses on the first-person experience associated withcognitive and mental events. We studied phenomenal data as a crucial fact for the domain of livingbeings, which, we expect, can provide the ground for a subsequent third-person study. The interventionwith Jhana meditation, and its qualitative assessment, provided us with experiential profiles based uponsubjects' evaluations of their own conscious experiences. The overall results should move towards anintegrated or global perspective on mind where neither experience nor external mechanisms have thefinal word. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the basis for the moral obligation to remember. As the moral relation to the past is primarily a matter of shared identity, the kind of obligation in question splits into two related issues, namely, that of political, state-oriented and state-organized memory on which the political identity rests and that of memory labour grounded in social identities based in shared, time-extended projects. Drawing upon tensions between these two, I discuss time control and the (...) accumulation of identity as central to memory labour and, referring to John Zerzan’s critique of symbolical roots of power, pinpoint the moral basis of such an accumulation. On the basis of this, I argue for nesting the duty to remember in acknowledging the agent’s recognition of the relatedness and dependency of their agency and possibilities of flourishing which can be obtained thanks to adjusting the field of the virtue of practical wisdom so that it includes members of the time-extended community. (shrink)

This article examines how Žižek’s analysis of “subjective” violence can be used to explore the ways in which media coverage of a terrorist attack is contoured and shaped by less noticeable forms of “objective” (symbolic and systemic) violence. Drawing upon newspaper coverage of the 2017 London Bridge attack, it is noted how examples of “subjective” violence were grounded in the externalization of a clearly identifiable “other”, which symbolically framed the terrorists and the attack as tied to and representative of the (...) UK Muslim community. Examples of “systematic” violence were most notable in the ideological edifice that underpinned this framing but also in the ways in which newspaper reports served to draw upon British values in the aftermath of the attack. This directed attention away from the contradictions within the UK, towards narratives that sought to “fix” these contradictions through eradicating the problem of “the other” and/or by violently protecting the British values “they” seek to undermine. As a consequence, newspaper coverage worked to uphold the illusion that “peace” could be achieved by eradicating terrorism through further forms of objective violence, including, internment without trial; the “ripping up” of human rights; and, closer surveillance of Muslim communities. Indeed, it was this unacknowledged violence that worked to maintain British values in the press’ coverage. (shrink)