Online research in philosophy

Kim's argument appears to render causally efficacious emergence impossible: Hume's argument appears to render normative emergence impossible, and, in its general form, it precludes any emergence at all. I argue that both of these barriers can be overcome, and, in fact, that they each constitute reductions of their respective underlying presuppositions. In particular, causally efficacious ontological emergence can be modeled, but only within a process metaphysics, thus avoiding Kim's argument, and making use of non-abbreviatory forms of definition, thus avoiding Hume's argument. I illustrate these points with models of the emergent nature of normative function and of representation.

We propose a view of embodied representations that is alternative to both symbolic/linguistic approaches and purely sensorimotor views of cognition, and can account for procedural and declarative knowledge manipulation. In accordance with recent evidence in cognitive neuroscience and psychology, we argue that anticipatory and simulative mechanisms, which arose during evolution for action control and not for cognition, determined the first form of representational content and were exapted for increasingly sophisticated cognitive uses. In particular, procedural and declarative forms of knowledge can be explained, respectively, in terms of on-line sensorimotor anticipation and off-line simulations of potential actions, which can give access to tacit knowledge and make it explicit. That is, mechanisms that evolved for the on-line prediction of the consequences of one's own actions (i.e. forward models) determine a (procedural) form of representation, and became exapted for off-line use. They can therefore be used to produce (declarative) knowledge of the world, by running a simulation of the action that would produce the relevant information. We conclude by discussing how embodied representations afford a form of internal manipulation that can be described as internalized situated action.

Philosophy Dept, Univ. of Massachusetts, 352 Bartlett Hall, 130 Hicks Way, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Received 22 July 2002 It is well known that the circumflex notation used by Russell and Whitehead to form complex function names in Principia Mathematica played a role in inspiring Alonzo Church’s ‘Lambda Calculus’ for functional logic developed in the 1920s and 1930s. Interestingly, earlier unpublished manuscripts written by Russell between 1903 and 1905—surely unknown to Church—contain a more extensive anticipation of the essential details of the Lambda Calculus. Russell also anticipated Scho¨nfinkel’s Combinatory Logic approach of treating multiargument functions as functions having other functions as value. Russell’s work in this regard seems to have been largely inspired by Frege’s theory of functions and ‘value-ranges’. This system was discarded by Russell due to his abandonment of propositional functions as genuine entities as part of a new tack for solving Russell’s paradox. In this article, I explore the genesis and demise of Russell’s early anticipation of the Lambda Calculus.

Some foundational conceptual issues concerning anticipatory systems are identified and discussed: 1) The doubly temporal nature of anticipation is noted: anticipations are directed toward one time, and exist at another; 2) Anticipatory systems can be open: they can perturb and be perturbed by states external to the system; 3) Anticipation may be facilitated by a system modeling the relation between its own output, its environment, and its future input; 4) Anticipations must be a part of the system whose anticipations they are. Each of these points are made more precise by considering what changes they require to be made to the basic equation characterising anticipatory systems. In addition, some philosophical questions concerning the content of anticipatory representations are considered.

A shift from a metaphysical framework of substance to one of process enables an integrated account of the emergence of normative phenomena. I show how substance assumptions block genuine ontological emergence, especially the emergence of normativity, and how a process framework permits a thermodynamic-based account of normative emergence. The focus is on two foundational forms of normativity, that of normative function and of representation as emergent in a particular kind of function. This process model of representation, called interactivism, compels changes in many related domains. The discussion ends with brief attention to three domains in which changes are induced by the representational model: perception, learning, and language.

Emergence seems necessary for any naturalistic account of the world — none of our familiar world existed at the time of the Big Bang, and it does now — and normative emergence is necessary for any naturalistic account of biology and mind — mental phenomena, such as representation, learning, rationality, and so on, are normative. But Jaegwon Kim’s argument appears to render causally efficacious emergence impossible, and Hume’s argument appears to render normative emergence impossible, and, in its general form, it precludes any emergence at all. I argue that both of these barriers can be overcome, and, in fact, that they each constitute reductios of their respective underlying presuppositions. In particular, causally efficacious ontological emergence can be modeled, but only within a process metaphysics, thus avoiding Kim’s argument, and by making use of non-abbreviatory forms of definition, thus avoiding Hume’s argument. I illustrate these points with models of the emergent nature of normative function and of representation.

We address the issue of the normativity of representation and how Grush might address it for emulations as constituting representations. We then proceed to several more detailed issues concerning the learning of emulations, a possible empirical counterexample to Grush's model, and the choice of Kalman filters as the form of model-based control.

There are many facets to mental life and mental experience. In this chapter, I attempt to account for some central characteristics among those facets. I argue that normative function and representation are emergent in particular forms of the self-maintenance of far from thermodynamic equilibrium systems in their essential far-from-equilibrium conditions. The nature of representation that is thereby modeled.

Anticipation allows a system to adapt to conditions that have not yet come to be, either externally to the system or internally. Autonomous systems actively control their own conditions so as to increase their functionality (they self-regulate). Living systems self-regulate in order to increase their own viability. These increasingly stronger conditions, anticipation, autonomy and viability, can give an insight into progressively stronger classes of models of autonomy. I will argue that stronger forms are the relevant ones for Artificial Life. This has consequences for the design of and accurate simulation of living systems. Keywords: autonomy, modelling, function, simulation, anticipation, emergence DUBOIS’ CONJECTURE Autonomy basically means self-regulation. Self-regulation implies internal control of system states to achieve greater functionality, either internally or interactively with the environment. Functionality, as a teleological notion, implies that the system must be directed by likely future states; that is, it must anticipate and (possibly) adapt to likely future states. Functionality does not require autonomy (assuming functional goals are externally set), but merely that current states of the system can select suitable future states on the basis of suitable input. In this..

Anticipation allows a system to adapt to conditions that have not yet come to be, either externally to the system or internally. Autonomous systems actively control the conditions of their own existence so as to increase their overall viability. This paper will first give minimal necessary and sufficient conditions for autonomous anticipation, followed by a taxonomy of autonomous anticipation. In more complex systems, there can be semi-autonomous subsystems that can anticipate and adapt on their own. Such subsystems can be integrated into a system’s overall autonomy, typically with greater efficiency due to modularity and specialization of function. However, it is also possible that semi-autonomous subsystems can act against the viability of the overall system, and have their own functions that conflict with overall system functions.