Online research in philosophy

One of the most important features of living beings that seems universal is perhaps their ability to be modified in a functional way.In order to modelize this characteristic, we designed automata with a finite number of instantaneous internal descriptions, with input(s) and output(s) and which are able to be functionally modified.

Very often, living beings seem able to change their functioning when external conditions vary. In order to study this property, we have devised abstract machines whose internal organisation changes whenever the external conditions vary. The internal organisations of these machines (or programs), are as simple as possible, functions of discrete variables. We call such machines self-modifying automata.These machines stabilise after any transient steps when they go indefinitely through a loop called (...) p-cycle or limit cycle of length p. More often than not, the p in the cycle is equal to one and the cycle reduces to a fixed point. (shrink)

The progress in artificial intelligence enables us to conceive adaptive systems whose characteristics are nearer and nearer to those of living beings. These characteristics though depend on ingenious choices by the designer of these systems: Initial conditions, parameters, optimisation functions, gradient and measure of fitness within the environment. Nevertheless, in living systems which are non-finalist, there are no programmers or designers to conceive of such ingenious choices. Our paper “Self-Programming Machines (I)” presents a non-finalist model since initial states and functions (...) are randomly chosen at the beginning and once and for all. In spite of the fact that they are non-finalist, these machines always stabilise at fixed points when they are connected to an external process. (shrink)

In an attempt to discover the properties of the nervous system, we imagined the conditions under which a machine would be able to construct its own program and from which emerged the model of Self Modifying Automata (SMA). We demonstrated the unicity of the SMA model, their convergence in a p-cycle and, in this case, the SELFREFERENCE of a stabilised SMA (it then generates its own program), their adaptability when connected (...) to a deterministic world. The SMA reaches its p-cycle very quickly and the most probable length of the -cycle is 1. (shrink)

The incommensurability thesis, as introduced by T.S. Kuhn and P.K. Feyerabend, states that incommensurable theories are conceptually incompatible theories which share a common domain of application. Such claim has often been regarded as incoherent, since it has been understood that the determination of a common domain of application at least requires a certain degree of conceptual compatibility between the theories. The purpose of this work is to contribute to the defense of the notion of local or gradual incommensurability, as proposed (...) by late Kuhn. The application of this notion would allow to render the incommensurability thesis coherent. To support this view, a typical example of incommensurability will be formally analyzed by applying the structuralist metatheory developed, among others by W. Balzer, C.U. Moulines and J.D. Sneed. The structural reconstruction of the relation between the phlogiston theory and the oxygen theory offered here will reveal that they are locally incommensurable, and will even make possible to determine the ontological reduction relation that they also exemplify. (shrink)