1. Social institutions greatly enhance the cognitive reach and repertoire of humans. Legal systems, monetary systems, educational systems, and systems of cultural conventions, for example, allow us...

Interest in the intersection between bilingualism and cognitive control and accessibility to neuroimaging methods have resulted in numerous studies with a variety of interpretations of the bilingual cognitive advantage. Neurocomputational Emergentism (or Neuroemergentism for short) is a new framework for understanding this relationship between bilingualism and cognitive control. This framework considers Emergence, in which two small elements are recombined in an interactive manner, yielding a non-linear effect. Added to this is the notion that Emergence can be captured in neural systems (...) using computationally inspired models. This review poses that bilingualism and cognitive control, as examined through the Neuroemergentist framework, are interwoven through development and involve the non-linear growth of cognitive processing encompassing brain areas that combine and recombine, in symbiotic and parasitic ways, in order to handle more complex types of processing. The models that have sought to explain the neural substrates of bilingual cognitive differences will be discussed with a reinterpretation of the entire bilingual cognitive advantage within a Neuroemergentist framework incorporating its neural bases. It will conclude by discussing how this new Neuroemergentist approach alters our view of the effects of language experience on cognitive control. Avenues to move beyond the simple notion of a bilingual advantage or lack thereof will be proposed. (shrink)

This article contributes to the nascent field of Cognitive Sociolinguistics. In particular, we are interested in how usage-based cognitive linguistics and variationist sociolinguistics may enrich each other. We first discuss some of the ways in which variationist insights have led cognitive linguists such as Gries (e.g. Multifactorial analysis in corpus linguistics: A study of particle placement, Continuum, 2003) and Grondelaers et al. (e.g. National variation in the use of er “there”. Regional and diachronic constraints on cognitive explanations, Mouton de Gruyter, (...) 2008) to pay attention to language-external factors (such as medium, region, and register), thereby greatly enhancing the description and understanding of certain grammatical phenomena. The focus then shifts to cognitive linguistic work (by Hollmann and Siewierska, English Language and Linguistics 11: 407–424, 2007 and Clark and Trousdale, English Language and Linguistics 13: 33–55, 2009) which has implications for sociolinguistic theory. The two usage-based concepts that have proved especially relevant in this connection are frequency effects and schemas. The article explores and illustrates the role of these two factors in relation to linguistic variation by means of a new case study on definite article reduction (DAR) in Lancashire dialect, a variety spoken in the North West of England. A twofold conclusion is drawn: first, a symbiotic relation between cognitive and sociolinguistics seems possible, but second, in order for this relation to be truly mutually beneficial variationists should get involved in the Cognitive Sociolinguistic enterprise much more than is currently the case. (shrink)

Since Darwin, the idea of psychological continuity between humans and other animals has dominated theory and research in investigating the minds of other species. Indeed, the field of comparative psychology was founded on two assumptions. First, it was assumed that introspection could provide humans with reliable knowledge about the causal connection between specific mental states and specific behaviors. Second, it was assumed that in those cases in which other species exhibited behaviors similar to our own, similar psychological causes were at (...) work. In this paper. we show how this argument by analogy is flowed with respect to the case of second-order mental states. As a test case, we focus on the question of how other species conceive of visual attention, and in particular whether chimpanzees interpret seeing as a mentalistic event involving internal states of perception, attention, and belief. We conclude that chimpanzees do not reason about seeing in this manner, and indeed, there is considerable reason to suppose that they do not harbor representations of mental states in general. We propose a reinterpretation model in which the majority of the rich social behaviors that humans and other primates share in common emerged long before the human lineage evolved the psychological means of interpreting those behaviors in mentalistic terms. Although humans, chimpanzees, and most other species may be said to possess mental states, humans alone may have evolved a cognitive specialization for reasoning about such states. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of AI-inclusive epistemology, suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) may develop its own epistemological perspectives, function as an epistemic agent, and assume the role of a quasi-member of society. We explore the unique capabilities of advanced AI systems and their potential to provide distinct insights within knowledge systems traditionally dominated by human cognition. Additionally, the paper proposes a framework for a sustainable symbiotic society where AI and human intelligences collaborate to enhance the breadth and (...) depth of epistemological pursuits. Through this exploration, we aim to redefine conventional knowledge paradigms by integrating the AI perspective, thereby fostering a more comprehensive and dynamic epistemological landscape. (shrink)

The notion of a physiological individuals has been developed and applied in the philosophy of biology to understand symbiosis, an understanding of which is key to theorising about the major transition in evolution from multi-organismality to multi-cellularity. The paper begins by asking what such symbiotic individuals can help to reveal about a possible transition in the evolution of cognition. Such a transition marks the movement from cooperating individual biological cognizers to a functionally integrated cognizing unit. Somewhere along the (...) way, did such cognizing units simultaneously have cognizers as parts? Expanding upon the multiscale integration view of the Free Energy Principle, this paper develops an account of reciprocal integration, demonstrating how some coupled biological cognizing systems, when certain constraints are met, can result in a cognizing unit that is in ways greater than the sum of its cognizing parts. Symbiosis between V. Fischeri bacteria and the bobtail squid is used to provide an illustration this account. A novel manner of conceptualizing biological cognizers as gradient is then suggested. Lastly it is argued that the reason why the notion of ontologically nested cognizers may be unintuitive stems from the fact that our folk-psychology notion of what a cognizer is has been deeply influenced by our folk-biological manner of understanding biological individuals as units of reproduction. (shrink)

The study of human cognition and the study of artificial intelligence (AI) have a symbiotic relationship, with advancements in one field often informing or creating new work in the other. Human cognition has many capabilities modern AI systems cannot compete with. One such capability is the detection, identification, and resolution of knowledge gaps (KGs). Using these capabilities as inspiration, we examine how to incorporate detection, identification, and resolution of KGs in artificial agents. We present a paradigm that (...) enables research on the understanding of KGs for visual-linguistic communication. We leverage and enhance and existing KG taxonomy to identify possible KGs that can occur for visual question answer (VQA) tasks and use these findings to develop a classifier to identify questions that could be engineered to contain specific KG types for other VQA datasets. Additionally, we examine the performance of different VQA models through the lens of KGs. (shrink)

The study of human cognition and the study of artificial intelligence (AI) have a symbiotic relationship, with advancements in one field often informing or creating new work in the other. Human cognition has many capabilities modern AI systems cannot compete with. One such capability is the detection, identification, and resolution of knowledge gaps (KGs). Using these capabilities as inspiration, we examine how to incorporate detection, identification, and resolution of KGs in artificial agents. We present a paradigm that (...) enables research on the understanding of KGs for visual-linguistic communication. We leverage and enhance and existing KG taxonomy to identify possible KGs that can occur for visual question answer (VQA) tasks and use these findings to develop a classifier to identify questions that could be engineered to contain specific KG types for other VQA datasets. Additionally, we examine the performance of different VQA models through the lens of KGs. (shrink)

If distributed cognition is to become a general analytic frame, it needs to handle more aspects of cognition than just highly efficient problem solving. It should also handle learning. We identify four classes of distributed learning: induction, repurposing, symbiotic tuning, and mutual adaptation. The four classes of distributed learning fit into a two-dimensional space defined by the stability and adaptability of individuals and their environments. In all four classes of learning, people and their environments are highly interdependent (...) during initial learning. At the same time, we present evidence indicating that certain types of interdependence in early learning, most notably mutual adaptation, can help prepare people to be less dependent on their immediate environment and more adaptive when they confront new environments. We also describe and test examples of learning technologies that implement mutual adaptation. (shrink)

If distributed cognition is to become a general analytic frame, it needs to handle more aspects of cognition than just highly efficient problem solving. It should also handle learning. We identify four classes of distributed learning: induction, repurposing, symbiotic tuning, and mutual adaptation. The four classes of distributed learning fit into a two-dimensional space defined by the stability and adaptability of individuals and their environments. In all four classes of learning, people and their environments are highly interdependent (...) during initial learning. At the same time, we present evidence indicating that certain types of interdependence in early learning, most notably mutual adaptation, can help prepare people to be less dependent on their immediate environment and more adaptive when they confront new environments. We also describe and test examples of learning technologies that implement mutual adaptation. (shrink)

Mind is not some mysterious mind stuff; no such stuff exists and the universe comprises only physical matter. It is an emergent property of certain complex material entities, not brains alone but whole human beings living and coping in the physical and social world. This thesis involves three ideas: materialism, emergent properties, and intentionality. The first two belong to the mind-body problem and the status of mental properties in the material universe. The third refers to the mind-world relation, the (...) class='Hi'>symbiotic relation between subject and object in cognition and experience. (shrink)

Being evasive as it is, philosophers have often tried to do without consciousness. Despite this, it has played a key role in the endeavours of philosophy of mind, as witnessed by its reputation as a "mark of the mental" and works of philosophers like John Searle and Daniel Dennett. Intentionality has shared a similar role, such that one and the other have often been brought together in a symbiotic relationship (Searle 1990) or deemed coextensive (Crane 1998). Such promiscuity is (...) not necessary. The revolution brought about by embodied and situated approaches seem to leave little place for such an association. Intentionality is seldom studied in the new paradigm, and when it is, new models of it are applicable to biological and robotic structures which, by most accounts, probably have no consciousness (Millikan 1984, Menary 2006). Menary (2009) also notes that the same could be said of scholastic accounts of intentionality. On the other hand, consciousness is being studied and various ways which do not involve intentionality or anything similar. I suggest that the association between these two notions has to do with the particular intellectual environment that prevailed in traditional philosophy of mind. Considerations about access and the good fortune of cognitivism, among other factors, made for a culture that emphasized the gap between behaviour on one hand and the the mental states that characterize us when we are in a disposition to cause behaviour on the other. In such conditions, concepts like intentionality and consciousness acted as bridge and allowed for a language which enabled accounts of the mind that remained somewhat comprehensive and unified, while leaving the gap unfilled. As they were covering the most problematic and elusive parts of our understanding of the mind, there was both enough similarity in the ways we used those concepts, and enough vagueness in how we accounted for their realization in physical systems, to make a rapprochement inevitable. When a new paradigm swept away the cognitivist conception of representation, some philosophers and cognitive scientists turned to more embodied and situated models of cognition. Representations in this paradigm (such as Millikan’s (1995) and Clark’s (1997)) are “action-oriented”, thus leaving no gap between action and representation – getting an account of the complex representations that we communicate in propositions is thus seen as a matter of empirical investigation. If there is no gap, concepts like intentionality and consciousness are called to play different roles in accounts of the mind – roles which do not permit any confusion. The poster will highlight relevant differences in the philosophical climate as they project themselves in accounts of representation (following Gallagher 2008), and make salient the link between this climate and the role of cognition in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Constructivist biosemiotics foundations imply the first-person basis of cognition. CBF are developed by the biology of cognition, relational biology, enactive approach, ecology of mind, second order cybernetics, genetic epistemology, gestalt, ecological perception and affordances, and active inference by minimization of free energy. CBF reject the idea of an objective independent reality to be represented by information processing in order to be the fittest. CBF assumes that perception is the behavioral configuration of an object and objects are tokens for (...) eigen-behaviors. Cognition takes place in the organism-environment structural coupling during the ontogeny and phylogeny of all biological unities including unicellular organisms. Therefore, if exogenous DNA particles are just tokens for the cell signalling eigen-behaviors, if there is no ‘information’ in the DNA sequence, how can we explain that the same virus or trans- sequence is associated with a similar phenotype? We call this ‘exogenomic problem’. With this basic example, but sufficiently generic to the whole biological world, we agree respectively with Autopoiesis, -system, and Gaia theory: i) ‘Information, code and meaning’ in the DNA sequence belong to the domain of the observer’s description. ii) Genetic ‘information’ is not a program or algorithmic software in DNA sequence. Rather it is a microphysical observable mode of eigen-behaviors in biological unities. iii) The transfer and acquisition of DNA particles is a biospheric phenomenon that maintains its homeorhesis, symbiotic and biosemiotic entailment. Based on the theoretical and experimental results of these theories, it is concluded that genetic ‘information’ is not a genomic sequence, nor any kind of information, but for the cell DNA must embody physical forcing. Genetic characters are the effects and not the cause of phenotype and DNA particles do not ‘use or manipulate’ cellular metabolism. Rather, any cellular configuration change that occurred before or during DNA perturbation is determined on the basis of the cellular standpoint. (shrink)

Defense of Scientific Hypothesis: From Reproducibility Crisis to Big Data sets out to explain and defend the scientific hypothesis. Alger's mission is to counteract the misinformation and misunderstanding about the hypothesis that even seasoned scientists have concerning its nature and place in modern science. Most biological scientists receive little or no formal training in scientific thinking. Further, the hypothesis is under attack by critics who claim that it is irrelevant to science. In order to appreciate and evaluate scientific controversies like (...) global climate change, vaccine safety, etc., the public first needs to understand the hypothesis. Defense of Scientific Hypothesis begins by describing and analyzing the scientific hypothesis in depth and examining its relationships to various kinds of science. Alger then guides readers through a review of the hypothesis in the context of the Reproducibility Crisis and presents survey data on how scientists perceive and employ hypotheses. He assesses cognitive factors that influence our ability to use the hypothesis and makes practical and policy recommendations for teaching and learning about it. Finally, Alger considers two possible futures of the hypothesis in science as the Big Data revolution looms: in one scenario, the hypothesis is displaced by the Big Data Mindset that forgoes understanding in favor of correlation and prediction. In the other, robotic science incorporates the hypotheses into mechanized laboratories guided by artificial intelligence. But in his illuminating epilogue, Alger envisions a third way, the Centaur Scientist, a symbiotic relationship between human scientists and computers. (shrink)

In recent years, a keen interest has emerged in the world of science regarding the relationship between the biological and the psychological aspects of the mind. How can the neural activity of the brain create thoughts, memory, feelings, and emotions? The answer to this question is the subject of this book. Jorge Angel M.D. posits that, although the mind is the byproduct of the firing of neurons in different parts of the brain, it is also the organizing principle of brain (...) activity. The brain and the mind have a symbiotic relationship that is present throughout the life span of the individual. In an effort to find answers to the riddle of the mind-brain relationship, Dr. Angel describes his personal experiences of many years in the practice of the healing arts, and he draws on a lifetime of study into the biology of the brain. The author maintains that the mind is much more than consciousness. Consciousness has been described metaphorically as the small tip of an iceberg floating in a sea of unconsciousness. Dwelling on the evolutionary development of the brain, he explains how intellectual experience arises from the activity of cell aggregates in the residual reptilian, residual mammalian, and rational parts of the brain that we have inherited from our animal ancestors through billions of adaptive trade-offs over millions of years. The human mind is one of the last unresolved mysteries in the world of science. This book provides a meaningful insight into the nature and function of the mind in normal subjects and their ability to think, feel, and remember. It also portrays in detail the changes that can be brought on the mind of humans by an assortment of psychological and neurological disorders. (shrink)

Riassunto: Nell’ambito delle associazioni simbiotiche ha acquisito credito crescente la cosiddetta prospettiva “olobiontica”, secondo cui animali e piante non dovrebbero più essere considerati entità autonome, con confini chiaramente delimitati, ma li si dovrebbe vedere come unità funzionali che consistono di reti inter-relazionali tra specie diverse. In quest’ottica le funzioni precedentemente attribuite a un singolo componente devono essere riviste alla luce della prospettiva relazionale e considerate quindi come prodotto di un’unità funzionale, ossia dell’olobionte. Nella prospettiva funzionalista, il noto concetto di mente (...) estesa considera la possibilità per cui il veicolo della cognizione possa andare oltre il cervello e anche oltre i limiti del corpo, mediante dispositivi artificiali. Questo lavoro intende offrire una variante della teoria della mente estesa intesa non solo come possibilità teoretica ma anche come ipotesi compatibile con alcuni recenti sviluppi nella ricerca biologica e biomedica. Si sosterrà quindi che l’attività del microbiota umano svolgono un ruolo funzionale nella regolazione dei nostri processi cognitivi, suggerendo che il microbiota costituisce un’estensione funzionale del sistema cognitivo precedentemente descritto come “umano”. La revisione e l’estensione dell’individuo biologico in favore dell’olobionte come unità funzionale porta anche alla necessità di aggiornare i confini dell’individuo come agente cognitivo. Parole chiave: Microbiota; Cognizione estesa; Olobionte; Simbiosi; Funzionalismo The individuated extended mind: A symbiotic perspective: In the framework of symbiotic associations, the so-called “holobiontic” perspective has increasingly emerged, according to which animals and plants should no longer be considered as autonomous entities, delimited by clear boundaries, but should rather be seen as functional units, consisting of inter-relational networks of different species. From this perspective, the functions that were previously ascribed to a single component, must be updated in the light of this relational perspective and rather judged as a product of the functional unit, that is, the holobiont. In a functionalist perspective, the famous conception of the extended mind investigates the hypothesis that the vehicle of cognition can extend not only outside the brain but also beyond the limits of the body, through artificial devices. The present work aims to offer a variant of the extended theory of mind not only as a theoretical possibility but also in accordance with some recent developments in biological and biomedical research. It will therefore be argued that the activity of the human microbiota plays a functional role in the regulation of our cognitive processes suggesting that the microbiota constitutes a functional extension of the cognitive system previously described as “human”. The revision and extension of the biological individual in favor of the holobiont as a functional unit also leads to the need to update the boundaries of the individual as a cognitive agent. Keywords: Microbiota; Extended Cognition; Holobiont; Symbiosis; Functionalism. (shrink)

Systemic existential conditions are indelible aspects of a client's reflective and nonreflective modes of consciousness, and therefore fall within the purview of philosophical counseling. This paper focuses on the experience of the dehumanization that is a function of the monetization of all aspects of post-modern neoliberal society. Monetization demands radical self-abandonment, self-anesthesia, auto-aggressive self-exploitation and addiction for functionality within the system. The bankrupt logic of pandemic terrorism confirms that monetization has become the preeminent measure of value. Monetization distorts both reason (...) and value, concealing a covert nihilism masquerading as the new metaphysics. The symbiotic natural world evidences a level of cooperation and coexistence that escapes monetization. Therefore, a monetized society is a society at odds with the world ecosystemand life itself. Caught in a labyrinth ofmonetized dehumanization, clients often participate in the fictional metanarrative of belief in unlimited individual possibility as a hedge against anxiety, depression, powerlessness, anomie, and the logical loop of cognitive dissonance. (shrink)

This paper delves into AI development’s historical and philosophical dimensions while highlighting the symbiotic relationship between philosophy and AI from a technological perspective: philosophy furnishes foundational concepts, and AI supplies practical tools. The paper posits neurosymbolic AI as a solution to present challenges, sparking discussions encompassing both technical and philosophical considerations. Advocating a multidisciplinary approach calls for merging empirical AI insights with philosophy and cognition science to enrich our comprehension of intelligence and propel AI forward.

The impact of Cyberculture, of digital devices on young people as extensions of the body, can be seen in terms of the decreasing structuring of thoughts and information, increasing impulsivity in perception and action, and the development of more primitive defense mechanisms. These adverse impacts result in the feeling of isolation and devaluation, frustration of present and uncertainty of the future, exteriorization and floating identities, mimetic and adhesive identifications, less cohesion of the self, and decreasing tolerance of the other. This (...) paper focuses on the following themes: Symbiosis versus syncretism: The affirmations of symbiosis. The dilutions of syncretism. Synopsis: Too much syncretism, too little symbiosis. Lack of a deeper co-construction of knowledge, more lasting, and sustainable. Lack of increased more independent personal cognitive deepening. Lack of ability to be alone. Causality and free will: Symbiotic versus syncretic causality. Conclusions: Cyber-selfs—either distributed or not at all? (shrink)

In this essay, we explore the philosophical and theoretical resonances of the artwork Qatipana from the perspective of some key insights of Gilbert Simondon’s information processing system approach. Qatipana (Quechua word that means flow, sequence, transmission) is a hybrid ecosystem of information flow which, even though not the kind of dispositive systems theory was designed to read, offers some valuable empirical insights to test some key aspects of Simondon’s information processing systems. In particular, we are interested in observing how Simondon’s (...) becoming and individuation play out in an algorithmic cycle performed by the cognitive system of an Artificial Intelligence agent: how does mono-technology and computerization of cultural techniques influence the nature of knowing the affection of being with others (people, things, animals)? We contrast Simondon’s contributions with the work of Norbert Wiener and Stafford Beer on information in cybernetics and the cosmotechnics and Technodiversity of Chinese philosopher Yuk Hui. Furthermore, we offer a provisional assessment of the reach, limits, and possibilities this kind of symbiotic crossing of technologies and arts: it is a field filled with challenges and unresolved complexities that should encourage us to recognize the urgency that is implied in the disruptive (and creative) we can see unfolding in social and political life. The already pervasive (and growing) presence of computational systems has become both a tremendous risk and a vertiginous deployment of liberating opportunities. Latin America and elsewhere are desperately calling for an insightful and imaginative engagement. (shrink)

Much of the literature directed at the Extended Mind Thesis has revolved around parity issues, focussing on the problem of how to individuate the functional roles and on the relevance of these roles for the production of human intelligent behaviour. Proponents of EMT have famously claimed that we shouldn’t take the location of a process as a reliable indicator of the mechanisms that support our cognitive behaviour. This functionalist understanding of cognition has however been challenged by opponents of EMT (...) [such as Rupert ; Adams & Aizawa ], who have claimed that differences between internal, biological processes and putatively extended ones not only exist but are actually crucial to undermine the idea that inner and outer are functionally equivalent. This debate about how to individuate the functional roles has led to a treacherous stand-off, in which proponents of EMT have been trapped under the persistent accusation of causal/constitution conflation. My strategy for responding to this charge is to look precisely at those functional differences highlighted by critics of EMT. I reckon that extended cognitive systems are endowed with quite different properties from systems that are “brain bound” and argue that it is precisely these differences that allow human minds to transcend their biological limitations. I thus defend a complementarity version of the extended mind, according to which externally located resources and internal biological elements make a different but complementary contribution to bringing about intelligent behaviour [Sutton ]. My defence of complementarity is based on both the phylogeny and the ontogeny of cognitive systems. I initially explore the interrelation between brain and cognitive development from a neuroconstructivist perspective [Quartz & Sejnowski ; Mareshal et al. ] and then argue that our brains do not have fixed functional architectures but are sculpted and given form by the activities we repeatedly engage in. As a result of repeated engagements in socio-cultural tasks, relevant brain pathways undergo substantial rewiring. Development thus scaffolds our brains, which become geared into working in symbiotic partnership with external resources. [Kiverstein & Farina ]. On these grounds, I call into question any tendency to interpret the human biological nature as fixed and endogenously pre-determined and side with proponents of DST [Oyama ; Griffiths & Gray ] and ontogenetic niche construction [Stotz ] in arguing that we should think of natural selection as operating on whole developmental systems composed of living organisms in culturally enriched niches. [Wheeler & Clark]. Complementarity defences of EMT argue that many of the kinds of cognition humans excel at can only be accomplished by brains working together with a body that directly manipulates and acts on the world [Rowlands ; Menary ]. I take Sensory Substitution Devices as my empirical case study. SSDs exploit the remarkable plasticity of our brains and with training supply a novel perceptual modality that compensates for loss or impaired sensory channel. I argue that the coupling with these devices triggers a new mode of phenomenal access to the world, something I propose to label as a kind of “artificial synaesthesia [Ward & Meijer ].This new mode of access to the world transforms our cognitive skills and gives rise to augmented processes of deep bio-technological symbiosis. SSDs therefore become mind enhancing tools [Clark ] and a perfect case study for Complementarity. Having shown the relevance of SSDs for EMT, I then take up the possibility that these devices don’t just relocate the boundaries of cognition but may also stretch the bounds of perceptual awareness. I explore the possibility that perceivers using SSDs count as extended cognitive systems and therefore argue that the experiences they enjoy should be counted as extended conscious experiences.[Kiverstein & Farina, ]. SSDs are quite often said to involve some form of incorporation.[Clark ]. Rupert has challenged this idea and its relevance for EMT on the grounds of his embedded approach. Particularly, he has explained tool-use in terms of the causal interaction between the subject and its detached tool. In the final chapter of my dissertation I critically look at his objections and argue that all his arguments fail to apply to SSDs. In SSD perception in fact the tool becomes geared to work in symbiotic partnership with the active subject and then get factored into its’ body schema so that both of them come to form a single system of cognitive analysis. (shrink)

For humans, Artificial Intelligence operates more like a Rorschach test, as it is expected that intelligent machines will reflect humans' cognitive and physical behaviours. The concept of intelligence, however, is often confused with consciousness, and it is believed that the progress of intelligent machines will eventually result in them becoming conscious in the future. Nevertheless, what is overlooked is how the exploration of Artificial Intelligence also pertains to the development of human consciousness. An excellent example of this can be seen (...) in the film Being John Malkovich (1999). In the film, different characters have their perceptions altered as a result of hacking into the mind of John Malkovich, which produces sensations that may have remained hidden to their consciousness due to their dis-abilities. This article engages with the research question: Can the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines trigger an artificial consciousness for humans? An artificially created consciousness is the premise that a machine can generate knowledge about an individual that is not already present in the person. For the same purpose, the article takes the cinematic text Being John Malkovich by Spike Jonze for exploring concepts such as human/robot rights, virtual sex, virtual rape, and bodily disability, which are essential topics in the midst of increasing human- Artificial Intelligence interaction. The purpose of this article is to contribute towards the creation of a better understanding of Artificial Intelligence, particularly from the perspective of film studies and philosophy, by highlighting the potential of Artificial Intelligence as a vessel for exploring human consciousness. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND CULTURE AND ITS ROLE IN SHAPING HUMANKIND’S ATTITUDE TO NATURE We live in an era of crises. One of them, the ecological crisis, arose from the fact that the human race plunders nature, destroying, among other things, the Earth’s biodiversity. In my paper I will show that the situation is rooted in a specific worldview. Moreover, I will interrogate the question of how we can deal with the problem. Humankind’s attitude to themselves and to the world (...) (including nature) is based on beliefs and values which make up an unquestioned prejudgment. Individuals absorb it in the process of socialization, as they assimilate the widely understood traditions of the social groups to which they belong. In the Western tradition in particular, our understanding of humanity’s situation in the world and its relation to nature, which we have had since modernity, found its clearest articulation in the views of René Descartes (1596–1650). I will begin by discussing the main characteristics of this position most pertinent to the main problem identified in the title. Then I will discuss the consequences of Cartesianism for the worldview of modern man such as the radical rationalism and anthropocentrism inherent in the European attitude. In this tradition humanity is identified with subjectivity and intellectual cognition. Reality outside of human subjectivity, that is, the whole animate and inanimate nature, is treated as the object of knowledge. Nature should be explored in the spirit of modernity’s maxim “We can do as much as we know” (F. Bacon 1561-1626); it can be used to our purposes, to satisfy our growing needs. This is being done without scruple, precisely because nature is denied being the subject. It has no right to claim moral protection. Today, in the era of globalization, this way of thinking, which originated in the West, has spread over the entire globe and led to the ongoing devastation of nature. We are dealing with an ecological disaster. In the next step I will interrogate how this situation can be changed and what may be the role of philosophy in this cultural shift. Every vision of the world is a construct (the Cartesian vision being a very good example). What philosophy can do is offer a certain vision of reality, in which humanity has a friendly (symbiotic) attitude to nature and does not treat it merely as a means to their ends. Such ecophilosophy could be based on the thesis that subjectivity is the property not just of all human beings, but of all other beings as well. Such an idea can be found in the work of the German scientist and philosopher Jacob von Uexküll (1864-1944), who granted the status of the subject to every living being. He laid foundations to the concept of nature as “a community of subjects” comprising man and the entire animate world, thus breaking away from the Cartesian framework. I am going to outline briefly his position. Finally, I will point out what needs to be done, if people are to change their attitude to nature. A good theory in and of itself will not suffice. It is necessary to instill ecological convictions and values in entire societies, so that these values would eventually come to seem obvious. We need to launch an extensive education campaign of both adults and—perhaps even more importantly—children. In other words, the comprehensive protection of nature can only be promoted through the nexus of ecophilosophy and education. (shrink)

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution characterized all life as engaged in a “struggle for existence”. To struggle requires internal data processing to detect and interpret patterns to guide behavior, a mechanism to struggle for existence. The cognitive bootstrapping A-PR cycle (Autonomy | Pattern Recognition) couples the origin of life and mind, enabling their symbiotic co-evolution. Life processes energy to create order. Mind processes data to create meaning. Life and mind co-evolve toward increased functional effectiveness, using A-PR feedback cycles that (...) reflect the two Laws deduced from Ockham’s Razor. The Law of Parsimony is only one of two laws that have emerged from debate about Ockham’s Razor. Less well known is the “other edge of Ockham’s Razor”, the Law of Succinctness which, when viewed through the lens of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, enables the A-PR Hypothesis to fulfill the criteria of Ockham’s Razor. (shrink)

Like any discipline, bioethics is a developing field of academic inquiry; and recent trends in scholarship have been towards more engagement with empirical research. This ‘empirical turn’ has provoked extensive debate over how such ‘descriptive’ research carried out in the social sciences contributes to the distinctively normative aspect of bioethics. This paper will address this issue by developing a practical research methodology for the inclusion of data from social science studies into ethical deliberation. This methodology will be based on a (...) naturalistic conception of ethical theory that sees practice as informing theory just as theory informs practice – the two are symbiotically related. From this engagement with practice, the ways that such theories need to be extended and developed can be determined. This is a practical methodology for integrating theory and practice that can be used in empirical studies, one that uses ethical theory both to explore the data and to draw normative conclusions. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo sostiene que algunas Meta-Picto-Poesías del Paisaje compuestas por el poeta estadounidense Gary Snyder toman como tema la pintura china del paisaje con las características de la antigua poesía china, resplandeciente de incomparable encanto artístico y sustancia cultural. La poesía de este tipo es una combinación perfecta de elementos orientales y occidentales, que integra las culturas, los pensamientos y las artes de ambas partes, cuya apreciación crea una experiencia compleja con un híbrido de formas artísticas y espacios estéticos. (...) Gary Snyder no es sólo un eco-poeta, sino también un estilista y un hombre de práctica. Sus obras poéticas revelan la relación de fomento entre literatura, cultura y naturaleza. El artículo pretende hacer un intento transcultural, interdisciplinar y multidisciplinar en la crítica de Snyder, con métodos analíticos que incluyen culturas orientales y occidentales, visiones antiguas y actuales, así como experiencias dinámicas y estáticas. (shrink)

This paper discusses a way to create social innovation around 2040. With such innovation, social restrictions that are regarded as being inevitable in the current society can be eliminated. First, it is necessary to determine how to approach the innovation. Symbiotic technology is one of the promising technologies for achieving social innovation. It is the fusion of scientific technology and socio-technology. Its elemental technologies are classified into two categories: technologies for converging the real and cyber worlds and those for (...) integrating hetero-systems. This paper describes examples of those technical categories and introduces the challenges of the first step toward social innovation. (shrink)

Current conceptions of human language include a gestural component in the communicative event. However, determining how the linguistic and gestural signals are distinguished, how each is structured, and how they interact still poses a challenge for the construction of a comprehensive model of language. This study attempts to advance our understanding of these issues with evidence from sign language. The study adopts McNeill's criteria for distinguishing gestures from the linguistically organized signal, and provides a brief description of the linguistic organization (...) of sign languages. Focusing on the subcategory of iconic gestures, the paper shows that signers create iconic gestures with the mouth, an articulator that acts symbiotically with the hands to complement the linguistic description of objects and events. A new distinction between the mimetic replica and the iconic symbol accounts for the nature and distribution of iconic mouth gestures and distinguishes them from mimetic uses of the mouth. Symbiotic symbolization by hand and mouth is a salient feature of human language, regardless of whether the primary linguistic modality is oral or manual. Speakers gesture with their hands, and signers gesture with their mouths. (shrink)

Research on brain or cognitive/affective processes, culture, social interaction, and structural analysis are overlapping but often independent ways humans have attempted to understand the origins of their evolution, historical, and contemporary development. Each level seeks to employ its own theoretical concepts and methods for depicting human nature and categorizing objects and events in the world, and often relies on different sources of evidence to support theoretical claims. Each level makes reference to different temporal bandwidths (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, (...) years, decades, and centuries) and focuses on different spatio-temporal activities and controlled and non-controlled stimulus conditions. Biological mechanisms and environmental pressures for survival simultaneously created a gradual intersection and enhancement of cognitive/affective skills, cultural practices, and changes in collaborative social interaction and communicative skills. The evolution of a given level of analysis is assumed to have been incremental and overlapping. These innovative and independent ways humans have learned to characterize their brain or cognitive/affective and social/economic/political life often depend on unexamined, representational re-descriptions or cognitive/affective and socio-cultural devices and forms of communication that facilitate the depiction of practices and beliefs we attribute to respondents or subjects and research colleagues. (shrink)

This article focuses on the issue of finding and illustrating a common ground for discussions between those academics involved in the science of entrepreneurial behavior and those involved in the ethics of entrepreneurial behavior. Several articles appeared in the April 1994 Business Ethics Quarterly on the relationship between the science of business and business ethics. In one article by Weaver and Trevino (1994; 130–143), the authors proposed three possible relationships between the normative and empirical business ethics. The author of another (...) article in that issue, Tom Donaldson (1994; 157–169), endorsed only one of the three relationships (165) offered by Weaver and Trevino and argued against the others. The relationship endorsed by Donaldson was called “symbiosis.” In doing so he recognized that both normative and empirical insights are necessary to business ethics. This article follows the combinedreasoning of these authors by describing a symbiotic relationship between the empirical and normative requirements of trust building for entrepreneurs. (shrink)

Sameness and difference, seen through the use of the term symbiosis, are tooled for the construction of other, future realities. Two examples from literature will describe how symbiosis is, in science fiction, used as means to propose connections with Otherness, through a return to a nature recovered, and as part of rational human deliberate actions towards the recovery of our present damaged planet. Science fiction is where the methodological approach is formulated, as thought experiments, within Ursula Le Guin's literature, from (...) where to develop the process to create two visual artworks. These visual artworks, both different series of images, depart from the term symbiosis, to reflect on what is different within the same, and on the construction of sameness in what is different. (shrink)

The article examines the ways in which humour twists regular euphemism use. Based on the classical fields of euphemisms anchored in religion, aesthetics, social politics, and amorality, it identifies the characteristics of their twisted variants with a humorous component: playing-with-fire euphemisms that jocosely provoke supernatural forces, innuendo euphemisms that entertain, mocking euphemisms that make fun of others in a teasing or demeaning way, and idealistic euphemisms that uncover obfuscating language and negative realities. Using English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish (...) euphemisms of different periods and genres, the article analyses the intentions, origins, motives, functions, and styles of humour, differentiates between symbiotic and parasitic twists, and thus provides a typology of twisted euphemism use. (shrink)

I propose to study one problem for epistemic dependence on experts: how to locate experts on what I will call cognitive islands. Cognitive islands are those domains for knowledge in which expertise is required to evaluate other experts. They exist under two conditions: first, that there is no test for expertise available to the inexpert; and second, that the domain is not linked to another domain with such a test. Cognitive islands are the places where we have the fewest resources (...) for evaluating experts, which makes our expert dependences particularly risky. -/- Some have argued that cognitive islands lead to the complete unusability of expert testimony: that anybody who needs expert advice on a cognitive island will be entirely unable to find it. I argue against this radical form of pessimism, but propose a more moderate alternative. I demonstrate that we have some resources for finding experts on cognitive islands, but that cognitive islands leave us vulnerable to an epistemic trap which I will call runaway echo chambers. In a runaway echo chamber, our inexpertise may lead us to pick out bad experts, which will simply reinforce our mistaken beliefs and sensibilities. (shrink)

Pessimism over a democracy’s ability to produce good outcomes is as longstanding as democracy itself. On one hand, democratic theorists consider democracy to be the only legitimate form of government on the basis that it alone promotes or safeguards intrinsic values like freedom, equality, and justice. On the other, skepticism toward the ordinary citizen’s cognitive capacities remains a perennial concern. Qualms about the epistemic value of democracy have only been made more pertinent by a fundamental problem of deep epistemic disagreement (...) which underlies the post-truth phenomenon. I argue that the democratic theorists who have sought to defend democracy on epistemic grounds have thus far neglected such deep and intractable disagreements. Without addressing this oversight, the epistemic democrat will find that collective decision-making processes quickly become paralyzed and will not be able to yield the epistemic benefits they promise. Hence, the work for epistemic democrats is to recognize and take into account the ramifications of epistemic disagreements so as to make a stronger case for epistemic democracy. (shrink)