Radical anti-realism and substructural logics

We first provide the outline of an argument in favour of a radical form of anti-realism premised on the need to comply with two principles, implicitness and immanence, when trying to frame assertability-conditions. It follows from the first principle that one ought to avoid explicit bounding of the length of computations, as is the case for some strict finitists, and look for structural weakening instead. In order to comply with the principle of immanence, one ought to take into account the difference between being able to recognize a proof when presented with one and being able to produce one and thus avoid the idealization of our cognitive capacities that arise within Hilbert-style calculi. We then explore the possibility of weakening structural rules in order to comply with radical anti-realist strictures

Research Programs Based on Machine Intelligence Games

Games have played a significant role throughout the history of artificial intelligence and robotics. Machine intelligence games are examined here from a methodological perspective, focusing on their role as generators of research programs. These research programs are schematized in terms of framework building, subgoaling, and outcome appraisal processes. The latter process is found to involve a rather intricate system of rewards and penalties, which take into account the double allegiance of participating scientists, trading and sharing interchanges occurring in multidisciplinary research environments, in addition to expected industrial payoffs and a variety of other research benefits in the way of research outreach and results dissemination, recruitment of junior researchers and students’ enrolment. Examples used to illustrate these various aspects of the outcome appraisal process include RoboCup and computer chess, Go, Poker and video-games. On the whole, a reflection on research programs that are based on machine game playing opens a window on central features of the complex systems of rewards and penalties that come into play to appraise machine intelligence. investigations

Strong Determinism vs. Computability

Are minds subject to laws of physics? Are the laws of physics computable? Are conscious thought processes computable? Currently there is little agreement as to what are the right answers to these questions. Penrose ([41], p. 644) goes one step further and asserts that: a radical new theory is indeed needed, and I am suggesting, moreover, that this theory, when it is found, will be of an essentially noncomputational character. The aim of this paper is three fold: 1) to examine the incompatibility between the hypothesis of strong determinism and computability, 2) to give new examples of uncomputable physical laws, and 3) to discuss the relevance of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem in refuting the claim that an algorithmic theory---like strong AI---can provide an adequate theory of mind. Finally, we question the adequacy of the theory of computation to discuss physical laws and thought processes