Can Intellectual Processes in the Sciences Also Be Simulated? The Anticipation and Visualization of Possible Future States

Socio-cognitive action reproduces and changes both social and cognitive structures. The analytical distinction between these dimensions of structure provides us with richer models of scientific development. In this study, I assume that (i) social structures organize expectations into belief structures that can be attributed to individuals and communities; (ii) expectations are specified in scholarly literature; and (iii) intellectually the sciences (disciplines, specialties) tend to self-organize as systems of rationalized expectations. Whereas social organizations remain localized, academic writings can circulate, and expectations can be stabilized and globalized using symbolically generalized codes of communication. The intellectual restructuring, however, remains latent as a second-order dynamics that can be accessed by participants only reflexively. Yet, the emerging "horizons of meaning" provide feedback to the historically developing organizations by constraining the possible future states as boundary conditions. I propose to model these possible future states using incursive and hyper-incursive equations from the computation of anticipatory systems. Simulations of these equations enable us to visualize the couplings among the historical--i.e., recursive--progression of social structures along trajectories, the evolutionary--i.e., hyper-incursive--development of systems of expectations at the regime level, and the incursive instantiations of expectations in actions, organizations, and texts.Comment: accepted for publication in Scientometrics (June 2015

Optimization as a design strategy. Considerations based on building simulation-assisted experiments about problem decomposition

In this article the most fundamental decomposition-based optimization method - block coordinate search, based on the sequential decomposition of problems in subproblems - and building performance simulation programs are used to reason about a building design process at micro-urban scale and strategies are defined to make the search more efficient. Cyclic overlapping block coordinate search is here considered in its double nature of optimization method and surrogate model (and metaphore) of a sequential design process. Heuristic indicators apt to support the design of search structures suited to that method are developed from building-simulation-assisted computational experiments, aimed to choose the form and position of a small building in a plot. Those indicators link the sharing of structure between subspaces ("commonality") to recursive recombination, measured as freshness of the search wake and novelty of the search moves. The aim of these indicators is to measure the relative effectiveness of decomposition-based design moves and create efficient block searches. Implications of a possible use of these indicators in genetic algorithms are also highlighted.Comment: 48 pages. 12 figures, 3 table

Implicit learning of recursive context-free grammars

Context-free grammars are fundamental for the description of linguistic syntax. However, most artificial grammar learning experiments have explored learning of simpler finite-state grammars, while studies exploring context-free grammars have not assessed awareness and implicitness. This paper explores the implicit learning of context-free grammars employing features of hierarchical organization, recursive embedding and long-distance dependencies. The grammars also featured the distinction between left- and right-branching structures, as well as between centre- and tail-embedding, both distinctions found in natural languages. People acquired unconscious knowledge of relations between grammatical classes even for dependencies over long distances, in ways that went beyond learning simpler relations (e.g. n-grams) between individual words. The structural distinctions drawn from linguistics also proved important as performance was greater for tail-embedding than centre-embedding structures. The results suggest the plausibility of implicit learning of complex context-free structures, which model some features of natural languages. They support the relevance of artificial grammar learning for probing mechanisms of language learning and challenge existing theories and computational models of implicit learning

Type-Based Termination, Inflationary Fixed-Points, and Mixed Inductive-Coinductive Types

Type systems certify program properties in a compositional way. From a bigger program one can abstract out a part and certify the properties of the resulting abstract program by just using the type of the part that was abstracted away. Termination and productivity are non-trivial yet desired program properties, and several type systems have been put forward that guarantee termination, compositionally. These type systems are intimately connected to the definition of least and greatest fixed-points by ordinal iteration. While most type systems use conventional iteration, we consider inflationary iteration in this article. We demonstrate how this leads to a more principled type system, with recursion based on well-founded induction. The type system has a prototypical implementation, MiniAgda, and we show in particular how it certifies productivity of corecursive and mixed recursive-corecursive functions.Comment: In Proceedings FICS 2012, arXiv:1202.317

Existentially Closed Models in the Framework of Arithmetic

We prove that the standard cut is definable in each existentially closed model of IΔ0 + exp by a (parameter free) П1–formula. This definition is optimal with respect to quantifier complexity and allows us to improve some previously known results on existentially closed models of fragments of arithmetic.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia MTM2011–2684

Enkinaesthetic polyphony: the underpinning for first-order languaging

We contest two claims: (1) that language, understood as the processing of abstract symbolic forms, is an instrument of cognition and rational thought, and (2) that conventional notions of turn-taking, exchange structure, and move analysis, are satisfactory as a basis for theorizing communication between living, feeling agents. We offer an enkinaesthetic theory describing the reciprocal affective neuro-muscular dynamical flows and tensions of co- agential dialogical sense-making relations. This “enkinaesthetic dialogue” is characterised by a preconceptual experientially recursive temporal dynamics forming the deep extended melodies of relationships in time. An understanding of how those relationships work, when we understand and are ourselves understood, when communication falters and conflict arises, will depend on a grasp of our enkinaesthetic intersubjectivity