The Post‐Modern Transcendental of Language in Science and Philosophy

In this chapter I discuss the deep mutations occurring today in our society and in our culture, the natural and mathematical sciences included, from the standpoint of the “transcendental of language”, and of the primacy of language over knowledge. That is, from the standpoint of the “completion of the linguistic turn” in the foundations of logic and mathematics using Peirce’s algebra of relations. This evolved during the last century till the development of the Category Theory as universal language for mathematics, in many senses wider than set theory. Therefore, starting from the fundamental M. Stone’s representation theorem for Boolean algebras, computer scientists developed a coalgebraic first-order semantics defined on Stone’s spaces, for Boolean algebras, till arriving to the definition of a non-Turing paradigm of coalgebraic universality in computation. Independently, theoretical physicists developed a coalgebraic modelling of dissipative quantum systems in quantum field theory, interpreted as a thermo-field dynamics. The deep connection between these two coalgebraic constructions is the fact that the topologies of Stone spaces in computer science are the same of the C*-algebras of quantum physics. This allows the development of a new class of quantum computers based on coalgebras. This suggests also an intriguing explanation of why one of the most successful experimental applications of this coalgebraic modelling of dissipative quantum systems is just in cognitive neuroscience

The Philosophy of Nature of the Natural Realism. The Operator Algebra from Physics to Logic

This contribution is an essay of formal philosophy—and more specifically of formal ontology and formal epistemology—applied, respectively, to the philosophy of nature and to the philosophy of sciences, interpreted the former as the ontology and the latter as the epistemology of the modern mathematical, natural, and artificial sciences, the theoretical computer science included. I present the formal philosophy in the framework of the category theory (CT) as an axiomatic metalanguage—in many senses “wider” than set theory (ST)—of mathematics and logic, both of the “extensional” logics of the pure and applied mathematical sciences (=mathematical logic), and the “intensional” modal logics of the philosophical disciplines (=philosophical logic). It is particularly significant in this categorical framework the possibility of extending the operator algebra formalism from (quantum and classical) physics to logic, via the so-called “Boolean algebras with operators” (BAOs), with this extension being the core of our formal ontology. In this context, I discuss the relevance of the algebraic Hopf coproduct and colimit operations, and then of the category of coalgebras in the computations over lattices of quantum numbers in the quantum field theory (QFT), interpreted as the fundamental physics. This coalgebraic formalism is particularly relevant for modeling the notion of the “quantum vacuum foliation” in QFT of dissipative systems, as a foundation of the notion of “complexity” in physics, and “memory” in biological and neural systems, using the powerful “colimit” operators. Finally, I suggest that in the CT logic, the relational semantics of BAOs, applied to the modal coalgebraic relational logic of the “possible worlds” in Kripke’s model theory, is the proper logic of the formal ontology and epistemology of the natural realism, as a formalized philosophy of nature and sciences

Ethical Responsibility vs. Ethical Responsiveness in Conscious and Unconscious Communication Agents

In this contribution, I start from Levy’s precious suggestion about the neuroethics of distinguishing between “the slow-conscious responsibility” of us as persons, versus “the fast-unconscious responsiveness” of sub-personal brain mechanisms studied in cognitive neurosciences. However, they are both accountable for how they respond to the environmental (physical, social, and ethical) constraints. I propose to extend Levy’s suggestion to the fundamental distinction between “moral responsibility of conscious communication agents” versus the “ethical responsiveness of unconscious communication agents”, like our brains but also like the AI decisional supports. Both, indeed, can be included in the category of the “sub-personal modules” of our moral agency as persons. I show the relevance of this distinction, also from the logical and computational standpoints, both in neurosciences and computer sciences for the actual debate about an ethically accountable AI. Machine learning algorithms, indeed, when applied to automated supports for decision making processes in several social, political, and economic spheres are not at all “value-free” or “amoral”. They must satisfy an ethical responsiveness to avoid what has been defined as the unintended, but real, “algorithmic injustice”

The care relationship and the dual philosophy of the mind

In diesem Beitrag werden Prinzipien der Therapiebeziehung umrissen, die auf einer dualen Anthropologie basieren, die typisch für den intentionalen Ansatz der Kognitionswissenschaften und sowohl der scholastischen als auch der phänomenologischen Tradition angehören. Dieser Ansatz basiert auf dem Prinzip, dass das Ich nicht objektivierbar ist und daher auf dem Prinzip, dass die Therapiebeziehung darin besteht, dem Ich seine Dynamik zurückzugeben, seine Fixierung auf ein immer unangemessenes Selbstbild, das durch die Umwelt oder das Individuum selbst hervorgerufen wird, zu vermeiden und ihm so seine konstruktive Beziehung zur Realität zurückzugeben. Die duale Anthropologie bietet auch eine physikalisch-mathematische Grundlage, die auf der Unterscheidung von Energie und Information basiert, die Lebewesen und insbesondere Menschen als «offenes» System im ständigen gegenseitigen Energieund Informationsaustausch mit der physischen und zwischenmenschlichen Umwelt definiert. Das bedeutet, dass der Geist und seine höheren Funktionen (Intellekt und Wille) nicht «im» Gehirn, sondern in die Schnittstelle zwischen dem Gehirn und seiner Umgebung verortet werden, wodurch der Begriff «Person» als ein für die intersubjektive Beziehung offenes Individuum eine Grundlage erhält, die – entgegen der modernen, schizophrenen Dualismen «Materie» und «Geist», «Physik» und «Metaphysik», «Wissenschaft» und «Humanismus» – in der Lage ist, in einer harmonischen Synthese das Beste der modernen Wissenschaft mit dem Kern der grossen metaphysischen Traditionen zu vereinen, jenseits der sukzessiven Unterscheidungen von Glaubensrichtungen und Kulturen.This contribution outlines the principles of the care relationship based on a dual anthropology typical of the intentional approach to cognitive sciences and common to both scholastic and phenomenological traditions. This approach is based on the principle that the self is not objectifiable and that the care relationship therefore ultimately entails returning to the self its dynamism, avoiding its fixation in always inadequate images of the self which are induced by the environment or by the individual himself, thus restoring its constructive relationship with reality. The physical-mathematical foundation of this dual anthropology is based on the distinction between energy and information whereby living and human beings are defined as an «open» system in a continuous mutual exchange of energy and information with the physical and interhuman environment. This means that the mind and its higher functions (intellect and will) do not lie «in» the brain but at the interface between the brain and its environment, giving to the notion of a «person» as an individual open to an intersubjective relationship a foundation which, unlike the modern schizophrenia of dualities between «matter» and «spirit», «physics» and «metaphysics», «science» and «humanism», is able to embrace the best of modern science with core leading metaphysical traditions in a harmonious synthesis, transcending successive distinctions of faiths and cultures

Intelligence and reference.

Formal ontology of the natural computatio

Workshop: Hacking Societies, Habits and Rituals, Berkeley 2019

We introduce the workshop “Hacking Societies, Habits and Rituals” to show some important contributions on the topic and aim at stimulating further discussion

The square of opposition a cornerstone of thought

This is a collection of new investigations and discoveries on the theory of opposition (square, hexagon, octagon, polyhedra of opposition) by the best specialists from all over the world. The papers range from historical considerations to new mathematical developments of the theory of opposition including applications to theology, theory of argumentation and metalogic

The Doubling of the Degrees of Freedom in Quantum Dissipative Systems, and the Semantic Information Notion and Measure in Biosemiotics

In the recent history of the effort for defining a suitable. [...