Take another little piece of my heart: a note on bridging cognition and emotions

Science urges philosophy to be more empirical and philosophy urges science to be more reflective. This markedly occurred along the “discovery of the artificial” (CORDESCHI 2002): in the early days of Cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers aimed at making machines more cognizant while setting up a framework to better understand human intelligence. By and large, those genuine goals still hold today, whereas AI has become more concerned with specific aspects of intelligence, such as (machine) learning, reasoning, vision, and action. As a matter of fact, the field suffers from a chasm between two formerly integrated aspects. One is the engineering endeavour involving the development of tools, e.g., autonomous systems for driving cars as well as software for semantic information retrieval. The other is the philosophical debate that tries to answer questions concerning the nature of intelligence. Bridging these two levels can indeed be crucial in developing a deeper understanding of minds. An opportunity might be offered by the cogent theme of emotions. Traditionally, computer science, psychological and philosophical research have been compelled to investigate mental processes that do not involve mood, emotions and feelings, in spite of Simon’s early caveat (SIMON 1967) that a general theory of cognition must incorporate the influences of emotion. Given recent neurobiological findings and technological advances, the time is ripe to seriously weigh this promising, albeit controversial, opportunity

Spurious, Emergent Laws in Number Worlds

We study some aspects of the emergence of logos from chaos on a basal model of the universe using methods and techniques from algorithmic information and Ramsey theories. Thereby an intrinsic and unusual mixture of meaningful and spurious, emerging laws surfaces. The spurious, emergent laws abound, they can be found almost everywhere. In accord with the ancient Greek theogony one could say that logos, the Gods and the laws of the universe, originate from "the void," or from chaos, a picture which supports the unresolvable/irreducible lawless hypothesis. The analysis presented in this paper suggests that the "laws" discovered in science correspond merely to syntactical correlations, are local and not universal.Comment: 24 pages, invited contribution to "Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Philosophies - Part 2" - Special Issue of the journal Philosophie

La scienza come ignoranza degli esperti ed il governo del numero

Reti per mettere in contatto la diversità e potenziare le singolarità oppure per produrre effetti di “campo medio”? Dinamiche della conoscenza in rete, nuove ed adattive, dai limiti mobili, oppure appiattimento normato su standard identici? Nella società, la “governance by numbers” impedisce il “governo” che dovrebbe risultare dall’interpretazione e dal dibattito nell’agorà. In scienza, il senso dei limiti e l’interpretazione dei dati contribuiscono alla novità del sapere. Le scelte vanno fatte ora, prima che Big Data non interpretati, dimostrabilmente ricchi di “correlazioni spurie”, l’immensa audience in rete di tweets senza senso e di articoli scientifici solo “main stream”, uccidano politica e scienza

Classical, quantum and biological randomness as relative unpredictability

International audienceWe propose the thesis that randomness is unpredictability with respect to an intended theory and measurement. From this point view we briefly discuss various forms of randomness that physics, mathematics and computing science have proposed. Computing science allows to discuss unpredictability in an abstract, yet very expressive way, which yields useful hierarchies of randomness and may help to relate its various forms in natural sciences. Finally we discuss biological randomness — its peculiar nature and role in ontogenesis and in evolutionary dynamics (phylogenesis). Randomness in biology has a positive character as it contributes to the organisms' and populations' structural stability by adaptation and diversity. Abstract We propose the thesis that randomness is unpredictability with respect to an intended theory and measurement. From this point view we briefly discuss various forms of randomness that physics, mathematics and computing science have proposed. Computing science allows to discuss unpredictability in an abstract, yet very expressive way, which yields useful hierarchies of randomness and may help to relate its various forms in natural sciences. Finally we discuss biological randomness—its peculiar nature and role in ontogenesis and in evolutionary dynamics (phylogenesis). Randomness in biology has a positive character as it contributes to the organisms' and populations' structural stability by adaptation and diversity

Relevance of Threshold Concepts for Understanding Evolution

Evolutionary theory is the integrative framework of modern biology and learning its essential tenets is widely considered a necessary feature of scientific literacy. However, research indicates that teachers and students still struggle with teaching and learning evolution, respectively, and have various alternative conceptions. Current research also displays learning difficulties with those evolutionary concepts that are strongly related to abstract concepts like randomness and probability, so-called threshold concepts. Until now, valid tools that assess students’ understanding of these threshold concepts to examine the relationships to knowledge and to the acceptance of evolution, as well as to investigate the effectiveness of educational strategies to support a conceptual knowledge of threshold concepts are lacking. Four empirical studies have been conducted as part of this dissertation project. All four studies focus on students’ conceptual knowledge of threshold concepts, particularly on the threshold concepts randomness and probability. Study 1 concentrates on the developmental process of two test instruments to measure students’ conceptual knowledge of randomness and probability in an evolutionary and mathematical context (RaProEvo and RaProMath, respectively). Study 2 examines the effectiveness of the simulation software EvoSketch for teaching and learning random and probabilistic processes in evolution. Study 3 deals with the question to which extent conceptual knowledge of randomness and probability is related to knowledge and acceptance of evolution. Study 4 investigates the effect of item features for students’ use of threshold concepts. Overall, using qualitative and quantitative methods, the presented dissertation provides new insights into the existing body of work on evolution education by developing a more expansive view of understanding (and accepting) evolution that encompasses aspects of threshold concepts

Wired Bodies. New Perspectives on the Machine-Organism Analogy

The machine-organism analogy has played a pivotal role in the history of Western philosophy and science. Notwithstanding its apparent simplicity, it hides complex epistemological issues about the status of both organism and machine and the nature of their interaction. What is the real object of this analogy: organisms as a whole, their parts or, rather, bodily functions? How can the machine serve as a model for interpreting biological phenomena, cognitive processes, or more broadly the social and cultural transformations of the relations between individuals, and between individuals and the environments in which they live. Wired bodies. New perspectives on the machine-organism analogy provides the reader with some of the latest perspectives on this vast debate, addressing three major topics: 1) the development of a ‘mechanistic’ framework in medicine and biology; 2) the methodological issues underlying the use of ‘simulation’ in cognitive science; 3) the interaction between humans and machines according to 20th century epistemology

Wired Bodies. New Perspectives on the Machine-Organism Analogy

The machine-organism analogy has played a pivotal role in the history of Western philosophy and science. Notwithstanding its apparent simplicity, it hides complex epistemological issues about the status of both organism and machine and the nature of their interaction. What is the real object of this analogy: organisms as a whole, their parts or, rather, bodily functions? How can the machine serve as a model for interpreting biological phenomena, cognitive processes, or more broadly the social and cultural transformations of the relations between individuals, and between individuals and the environments in which they live? Wired Bodies. New Perspectives on the Machine-Organism Analogy provides the reader with some of the latest perspectives on this vast debate, addressing three major topics:1) the development of a ‘mechanistic’ framework in medicine and biology; 2) the methodological issues underlying the use of ‘simulation’ in cognitive science; 3) the interaction between humans and machines according to 20th-century epistemology

Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Philosophies - Part 2

Modern technology has eliminated barriers posed by geographic distances between people around the globe, making the world more interdependent. However, in spite of global collaboration within research domains, fragmentation among research fields persists and even escalates. Disintegrated knowledge has become subservient to the competition in the technological and economic race, leading in the direction chosen not by reason and intellect but rather by the preferences of politics and markets. To restore the authority of knowledge in guiding humanity, we have to reconnect its scattered isolated parts and offer an evolving and diverse but shared vision of objective reality connecting the sciences and other knowledge domains and informed by and in communication with ethical and esthetic thinking and being. This collection of articles responds to the second call from the journal Philosophies to build a new, networked world of knowledge with domain specialists from different disciplines interacting and connecting with the rest of the knowledge-producing and knowledge-consuming communities in an inclusive, extended natural-philosophic, human-centric manner. In this process of reconnection, scientific and philosophical investigations enrich each other, with sciences informing philosophies about the best current knowledge of the world, both natural and human-made, while philosophies scrutinize the ontological, epistemological, and methodological foundations of sciences

Agency and Organisation: The Dialectics of Nature and Life

In recent decades, there have been major theoretical changes within evolutionary biology. In this dissertation, I critically reconstruct these developments through philosophy to assess how it may inform these debates. The overall aim is to show the mutual relevance between current trends in biology and the dialectical approach to nature. I argue that the repetition of the neglected tradition of organicism is anticipated both by a dialectical tradition within science and by Hegel’s philosophy – and that these theories may together inform the ongoing shift within evolutionary biology called the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). I stage the discussion by outlining the tenets and history of the modern synthesis (MS) and the alternative: the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). It takes us into topics such as autonomy, organisation, reduction, and autopoiesis. Based on these discussions, I make the case that the most promising alternative to the MS is the so-called organisational approach formulated within theoretical biology and apply dialectics to strengthen this claim. In my view, they share a fundamental premise: Biology must surpass the physical worldview and adopt a more complex model to comprehend life as an ongoing regeneration of organisation and an expression of self-determination. To bring out the philosophical stakes of this shift, I take on Hegel’s writings on nature, life, and purposiveness and relate them to contemporary thinkers. The main contribution of this work lies not in a particularly novel reading of any of the theories I examine but in bringing them together – both within philosophy and biology and between them – and systematically mapping how philosophy and the humanities should deal with the natural sciences. The new kind of naturalism suggested here, which places life at its core, also calls for another scientific ideal which strives for unification without subsumption or eradication of differences