Challenging the Computational Metaphor: Implications for How We Think

This paper explores the role of the traditional computational metaphor in our thinking as computer scientists, its influence on epistemological styles, and its implications for our understanding of cognition. It proposes to replace the conventional metaphor--a sequence of steps--with the notion of a community of interacting entities, and examines the ramifications of such a shift on these various ways in which we think

Visualization in cyber-geography: reconsidering cartography's concept of visualization in current usercentric cybergeographic cosmologies

This article discusses some epistemological problems of a semiotic and cybernetic character in two current scientific cosmologies in the study of geographic information systems (GIS) with special reference to the concept of visualization in modern cartography. Setting off from Michael Batty’s prolegomena for a virtual geography and Michael Goodchild’s “Human-Computer-Reality-Interaction” as the field of a new media convergence and networking of GIS-computation of geo-data, the paper outlines preliminarily a common field of study, namely that of cybernetic geography, or just “cyber-geography) owing to the principal similarities with second order cybernetics. Relating these geographical cosmologies to some of Science’s dominant, historical perceptions of the exploring and appropriating of Nature as an “inventory of knowledge”, the article seeks to identify some basic ontological and epistemological dimensions of cybernetic geography and visualization in modern cartography. The points made is that a generalized notion of visualization understood as the use of maps, or more precisely as cybergeographic GIS-thinking seems necessary as an epistemological as well as a methodological prerequisite to scientific knowledge in cybergeography. Moreover do these generalized concept seem to lead to a displacement of the positions traditionally held by the scientist and lay-man citizen, that is not only in respect of the perception of the matter studied, i.e. the field of geography, but also of the manner in which the scientist informs the lay-man citizen in the course of action in the public participation in decision making; a displacement that seems to lead to a more critical, or perhaps even quasi-scientific approach as concerns the lay-man user

Mandevillian Intelligence: From Individual Vice to Collective Virtue

Mandevillian intelligence is a specific form of collective intelligence in which individual cognitive shortcomings, limitations and biases play a positive functional role in yielding various forms of collective cognitive success. When this idea is transposed to the epistemological domain, mandevillian intelligence emerges as the idea that individual forms of intellectual vice may, on occasion, support the epistemic performance of some form of multi-agent ensemble, such as a socio-epistemic system, a collective doxastic agent, or an epistemic group agent. As a specific form of collective intelligence, mandevillian intelligence is relevant to a number of debates in social epistemology, especially those that seek to understand how group (or collective) knowledge arises from the interactions between a collection of individual epistemic agents. Beyond this, however, mandevillian intelligence raises issues that are relevant to the research agendas of both virtue epistemology and applied epistemology. From a virtue epistemological perspective, mandevillian intelligence encourages us to adopt a relativistic conception of intellectual vice/virtue, enabling us to see how individual forms of intellectual vice may (sometimes) be relevant to collective forms of intellectual virtue. In addition, mandevillian intelligence is relevant to the nascent sub-discipline of applied epistemology. In particular, mandevillian intelligence forces us see the potential epistemic value of (e.g., technological) interventions that create, maintain or promote individual forms of intellectual vice

The Epistemology of Simulation, Computation and Dynamics in Economics Ennobling Synergies, Enfeebling 'Perfection'

Lehtinen and Kuorikoski ([73]) question, provocatively, whether, in the context of Computing the Perfect Model, economists avoid - even positively abhor - reliance on simulation. We disagree with the mildly qualified affirmative answer given by them, whilst agreeing with some of the issues they raise. However there are many economic theoretic, mathematical (primarily recursion theoretic and constructive) - and even some philosophical and epistemological - infelicities in their descriptions, definitions and analysis. These are pointed out, and corrected; for, if not, the issues they raise may be submerged and subverted by emphasis just on the unfortunate, but essential, errors and misrepresentationsSimulation, Computation, Computable, Analysis, Dynamics, Proof, Algorithm

The Minimal Levels of Abstraction in the History of Modern Computing

From the advent of general-purpose, Turing-complete machines, the relation between operators, programmers, and users with computers can be seen in terms of interconnected informational organisms (inforgs) henceforth analysed with the method of levels of abstraction (LoAs), risen within the Philosophy of Informa- tion (PI). In this paper, the epistemological levellism proposed by L. Floridi in the PI to deal with LoAs will be formalised in constructive terms using category the- ory, so that information itself is treated as structure-preserving functions instead of Cartesian products. The milestones in the history of modern computing are then analysed via constructive levellism to show how the growth of system complexity lead to more and more information hiding

The Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics, DSGE and the Theory of Policy - Computable & Constructive Foundations

The genesis and the path towards what has come to be called the DSGE model is traced, from its origins in the Arrow-Debreu General Equilibrium model (ADGE), via Scarf's Computable General Equilibrium model (CGE) and its applied version as Applied Computable General Equilibrium model (ACGE), to its ostensible dynamization as a Recursive Competitive Equilibrium (RCE). It is shown that these transformations of the ADGE - including the fountainhead - are computably and constructively untenable. The policy implications of these (negative) results, via the Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics in particular, and against the backdrop of the mathematical theory of economic policy in general, are also discussed (again from computable and constructive points of view). Suggestions for going 'beyond DSGE' are, then, outlined on the basis of a framework that is underpinned - from the outset - by computability and constructivity considerationsComputable General Equilibrium, Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium, Computability, Constructivity, Fundamental Theorems of Welfare Economics, Theory of Policy, Coupled Nonlinear Dynamic

Computation in Economics

This is an attempt at a succinct survey, from methodological and epistemological perspectives, of the burgeoning, apparently unstructured, field of what is often – misleadingly – referred to as computational economics. We identify and characterise four frontier research fields, encompassing both micro and macro aspects of economic theory, where machine computation play crucial roles in formal modelling exercises: algorithmic behavioural economics, computable general equilibrium theory, agent based computational economics and computable economics. In some senses these four research frontiers raise, without resolving, many interesting methodological and epistemological issues in economic theorising in (alternative) mathematical modesClassical Behavioural Economics, Computable General Equilibrium theory, Agent Based Economics, Computable Economics, Computability, Constructivity, Numerical Analysis