From “the dialectics of nature” to the inorganic gene

The concept of projection from one space to another, with a consequent loss of information, can be seen in the relationships of gene to protein and language description to real situation. Such a transformation can only be reversed if extra external information is re-supplied. The genetic algorithm embodying this idea is now used in applied mathematics for exploring a configuration space. Such a dialectic – transformation back and forth between two kinds of description – extends the traditional Hegelian concept used by Engels and others of change as resulting from a resolution of the conflict of two opposing tendencies and provides for evolution of the joint system

Using simulations and artificial life algorithms to grow elements of construction

'In nature, shape is cheaper than material', that is a common truth for most of the plants and other living organisms, even though they may not recognize that. In all living forms, shape is more or less directly linked to the influence of force, that was acting upon the organism during its growth. Trees and bones concentrate their material where thy need strength and stiffness, locating the tissue in desired places through the process of self-organization. We can study nature to find solutions to design problems. That’s where inspiration comes from, so we pick a solution already spotted somewhere in the organic world, that closely resembles our design problem, and use it in constructive way. First, examining it, disassembling, sorting out conclusions and ideas discovered, then performing an act of 'reverse engineering' and putting it all together again, in a way that suits our design needs. Very simple ideas copied from nature, produce complexity and exhibit self-organization capabilities, when applied in bigger scale and number. Computer algorithms of simulated artificial life help us to capture them, understand well and use where needed. This investigation is going to follow the question : How can we use methods seen in nature to simulate growth of construction elements? Different ways of extracting ideas from world of biology will be presented, then several techniques of simulated emergence will be demonstrated. Specific focus will be put on topics of computational modelling of natural phenomena, and differences in developmental and non-developmental techniques. Resulting 3D models will be shown and explained

Artificial life meets computational creativity?

I review the history of work in Artificial Life on the problem of the open-ended evolutionary growth of complexity in computational worlds. This is then put into the context of evolutionary epistemology and human creativity

Synchronous Online Philosophy Courses: An Experiment in Progress

There are two main ways to teach a course online: synchronously or asynchronously. In an asynchronous course, students can log on at their convenience and do the course work. In a synchronous course, there is a requirement that all students be online at specific times, to allow for a shared course environment. In this article, the author discusses the strengths and weaknesses of synchronous online learning for the teaching of undergraduate philosophy courses. The author discusses specific strategies and technologies he uses in the teaching of online philosophy courses. In particular, the author discusses how he uses videoconferencing to create a classroom-like environment in an online class

Ilmiöiden jäljillä : Tutkimuksia luokittelusta ja käsitteellisestä muutoksesta yhteiskunta- ja käyttäytymistieteissä

The articles comprising this dissertation concern classification and concept formation in the social and behavioral sciences. In particular, the emphasis in the study is on the philosophical analysis of interdisciplinary settings created by the recent intellectual developments on the interfaces between the social sciences, psychology, and neuroscience. The need for a systematic examination of the problems of conceptual coordination and integration across disciplinary boundaries is illustrated by focusing on phenomena whose satisfactory explanation requires drawing together the theoretical resources from a variety of disciplines. In philosophy, questions regarding the nature of scientific concepts have often been framed in terms of theories of natural kinds. For this reason, analysis of the notion of natural kind as well as examination of how theories of natural kinds should be connected to recent philosophical accounts of scientific explanation and mechanisms form the core of the study. Building on contemporary discussions on these topics in the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of cognitive science, and the philosophy of the social sciences, the articles develop a mechanistic theory of natural kinds in the social and behavioral sciences, and scrutinize its applicability and usefulness as a theory of conceptual change in interdisciplinary settings. The study suggests that, although the mechanistic theory cannot account for the functioning of the whole range of scientific concepts, interweaving biological, cognitive, and social mechanisms in the manner suggested by the mechanistic theory offers a naturalistic and non-reductionist basis for conceptualizing epistemic coordination across disciplinary boundaries.Kuudesta artikkelista ja johdantoesseestä koostuva väitöskirja on tieteenfilosofinen tutkimus käsitteenmuodostuksesta ihmistieteissä. Tutkimusta motivoi kognitio- ja neurotieteiden sekä genetiikan kasvava rooli inhimillisen käyttäytymisen selittämisessä, mikä on luonut tarpeen ajatella uudelleen eri ihmistieteiden välistä työnjakoa ja myös niiden suhdetta luonnontieteisiin. Väitöskirjan yleisenä päämääränä onkin luoda filosofisia välineitä moni- ja poikkitieteellisissä konteksteissa tapahtuvan käsitteenmuodostuksen ja tutkimusalojen välisen tiedollisen yhteistyön jäsentämiseen. Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan ilmiöitä ja käsitteitä, jotka sijoittuvat toisaalta kognitiotieteiden ja yhteiskuntatieteiden välimaastoon, ja toisaalta tieteellisen tutkimuksen ja yhteiskunnallisen todellisuuden kohtaamispinnalle. Useiden psykiatristen sairauksien, kognitiivisen kykyjen, ja sosiaalisten ilmiöiden kattava ymmärtäminen edellyttää monista eri perspektiiveistä peräisin olevien käsitteellistysten suhteiden selvittämistä ja niiden yhteensovittamista. Väitöskirja-artikkeleissa tarkastelun kohteeksi valitut ilmiöt (mm. syömishäiriöt, autismikirjon häiriöt, (sosiaalinen) muisti, itsensä toteuttavat ennusteet) toimivat tapausesimerkkeinä, joiden valossa tässä tutkimuksessa esitettyä tieteellisten käsitteiden teoriaa kehitetään ja arvioidaan. Tutkimuksen keskeinen väite on, että sekä psykologisissa ihmistieteissä että yhteiskuntatieteissä käsitteenmuodostus tulisi lähtökohtaisesti perustaa tietoon ilmiöitä ylläpitävistä kausaalimekanismeista. Tutkimuksessa kehitetty mekanismiperustainen käsiteteoria nojaa viimeaikaiseen filosofisiin keskusteluihin luonnollisista luokista ja tieteellisestä selittämisestä. Tämän teorian analysointi osoittaa, millä tavoin käsitteenmuodostuksen ja tieteellisen luokittelun ankkuroiminen tietoon kausaalisista prosesseista ja ilmiöitä ylläpitävistä syy-vaikutus-suhteista tarjoaa luotettavan perustan ilmiöiden luotettavalle ennustamiselle, selittämiselle ja niihin kohdistuvien interventioiden suunnittelulle. Teoria tarjoaa myös näkökulman tutkimusalarajat ylittävän tiedollisen koordinaation ja integraation jäsentämiseen: eri perspektiivien välinen yhteistyö voidaan ymmärtää tutkittavan ilmiön taustalla vaikuttavien sosiaalisten, kognitiivisten ja biologisten kausaalimekanismien välisten suhteiden selvittämisenä, ja tämän mekanismien verkoston yhteenpunominen johtaa kattavampaan kokonaiskuvaan tutkimuskohteesta. Mekanismiperustaisen lähestymistavan reunaehtojen ja sen sovellusalan arviointiin perustuen tutkimuksessa argumentoidaan, että rajoituksistaan huolimatta teoria tarjoaa mm. sosiaalikonstruktionismia ja essentialismin eri muotoja lupaavamman perustan ihmistieteellisen tiedon jäsentämiseen ja käsitteellisen muutoksen kuvaamiseen

Cognitivism and Innovation in Economics - Two Lectures

This issue of the Department W.P. reproduces two lectures by Professor Loasby organized by the CISEPS (Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Economics, Psychology and the Social Sciences at Bicocca) in collaboration with the IEP, the Istituto di Economia Politica of the Bocconi University in Milan. The first lecture was delivered at the University of Milano-Bicocca on 13 October 2003 and the second was staged the day after at the Bocconi University. The lectures are reproduced here together with a comment by dr. Stefano Brusoni of Bocconi and SPRU. Two further comments were presented at the time by Professor Richard Arena of the University of Nice and by Professor Pier Luigi Sacco of the University of Venice. Both of them deserve gratitude for active participation to the initiative. Unfortunately it has not been possible to include their comments in the printed form. In these lectures Brian Loasby opens under the title of Psychology of Wealth (a title echoing a famous essay by Carlo Cattaneo) and he develops an argument in cognitive economics which is based on Hayek’s theory of the human mind with significant complements and extensions, mainly from Smith and Marshall. The second lecture provides a discussion on organization and the human mind. It can be read independently although it is linked to the former. Indeed, in Professor Loasby’s words, “the psychology of wealth leads to a particular perspective on this problem of organization”. The gist of the argument lies in the need to appreciate the significance of an appropriate “balance between apparently conflicting principles: the coherence, and therefore the effectiveness, of this differentiated system requires some degree of compatibility between its elements, but the creation of differentiated knowledge and skills depends on the freedom to make idiosyncratic patterns by thinking and acting in ways which may be radically different from those of many other people”. This dilemma of compatibility vs. independence can find solution in a variety of contexts, as Loasby’s analysis shows. In his comments Richard Arena had focussed on the rationality issues, so prominent in Loasby’s text. For example, he had suggested that the cleavage between rational choice equilibrium and evolutionary order offers ground to new forms of self-organization. Pier Luigi Sacco had emphasized that Loasby’s approach breaks new ground on the economics of culture and paves the way to less simplistic conceptions of endogenous growth than is suggested by the conventional wisdom of current models. Unfortunately, as hinted above, is has proved impossible to include those comments in the present booklet along with Loasby’s lectures. A special obligation must be recorded to Dr. Stefano Brusoni, who has prepared a written version of his own comment which has been printed in this booklet and can be offered to the reader. Among other participants Roberto Scazzieri, of the University of Bologna, Tiziano Raffaelli, of the University of Pisa, Luigino Bruni of Bicocca, Riccardo Cappellin of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’ and others were able to offer significant comments during the two sessions of the initiative. The organizers are particularly grateful to Professor Brian Loasby for the active and generous support of the initiative. Together with our colleagues and students we have been able to admire his enthusiasm and intellectual creativity in treating some of the more fascinating topics of contemporary economics.

Enaction-Based Artificial Intelligence: Toward Coevolution with Humans in the Loop

This article deals with the links between the enaction paradigm and artificial intelligence. Enaction is considered a metaphor for artificial intelligence, as a number of the notions which it deals with are deemed incompatible with the phenomenal field of the virtual. After explaining this stance, we shall review previous works regarding this issue in terms of artifical life and robotics. We shall focus on the lack of recognition of co-evolution at the heart of these approaches. We propose to explicitly integrate the evolution of the environment into our approach in order to refine the ontogenesis of the artificial system, and to compare it with the enaction paradigm. The growing complexity of the ontogenetic mechanisms to be activated can therefore be compensated by an interactive guidance system emanating from the environment. This proposition does not however resolve that of the relevance of the meaning created by the machine (sense-making). Such reflections lead us to integrate human interaction into this environment in order to construct relevant meaning in terms of participative artificial intelligence. This raises a number of questions with regards to setting up an enactive interaction. The article concludes by exploring a number of issues, thereby enabling us to associate current approaches with the principles of morphogenesis, guidance, the phenomenology of interactions and the use of minimal enactive interfaces in setting up experiments which will deal with the problem of artificial intelligence in a variety of enaction-based ways

Mammalian Brain As a Network of Networks

Acknowledgements AZ, SG and AL acknowledge support from the Russian Science Foundation (16-12-00077). Authors thank T. Kuznetsova for Fig. 6.Peer reviewedPublisher PD