Synthese Library 375 Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science Computing and Philosophy Vincent C. Müller Editor Selected Papers from IACAP 2014 Synthese Library Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science Volume 375 Editor-in-Chief Otávio Bueno, University of Miami, Department of Philosophy, USA Editors Berit Brogaard, University of Miami, USA Anjan Chakravartty, University of Notre Dame, USA Steven French, University of Leeds, UK Catarina Dutilh Novaes, University of Groningen, The Netherlands More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6607 Vincent C. Müller Editor Computing and Philosophy Selected Papers from IACAP 2014 123 Editor Vincent C. Müller Anatolia College/ACT Thessaloniki, Greece http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4144-4957 http://www.sophia.de Synthese Library ISBN 978-3-319-23290-4 ISBN 978-3-319-23291-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-23291-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015959017 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Printed on acid-free paper Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www. springer.com) Editorial IACAP 2014 The conferences on 'Computing and Philosophy' (CAP) have a long tradition of 28 years, and they are now organised annually by the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP, http://www.iacap.org/), alternating between Europe and North America. The meeting took place in Thessaloniki, July 2–4, 2014, at the suggestion of the IACAP leadership, in particular of Mariarosaria Taddeo (president) and Marcello Guarini (executive director). The academic and organisational responsibility was given to this editor, who was supported by our team in Thessaloniki, especially Theo Gantinas. Details of the meeting, including a programme, videos and slides of the invited papers, some photos and a list of participants, are available on the site of the conference, which will remain on http://www.pt-ai.org/iacap. There was general agreement that the conference ran smoothly and showed significantly higher academic level than in some previous years. Review Process We sent out a call for papers saying, 'Computing technologies both raise philosophical questions and shed light on traditional philosophical problems; it is this two-way relation that is the focus of IACAP meetings since 1986'. In total we had 78 submissions by the deadline – which was note extended. Of these 34 (43 %) were accepted for the main track and 5 for the 'young researchers' track. We also accepted 14 papers as poster presentations. We are very grateful to the 42 members of our programme committee who did all the hard reviewing work, double blind. Together with the authors, they are to be thanked for the academic quality of the meeting: Akman, Varol – Bilkent University Beavers, Anthony – The University of Evansville v vi Editorial Bello, Paul – Office of Naval Research Berkeley, Istvan – The University of Louisiana at Lafayette Bishop, Mark – Goldsmiths, University of London Bottis, Maria – Ionian University Bryson, Joanna – University of Bath Chrisley, Ron – University of Sussex Coeckelbergh, Mark – University of Twente Danielson, Peter – University of British Columbia Dietrich, Eric – Binghampton University, State University NY Dodig Crnkovic, Gordana – Mälardalen University Ess, Charles – Aarhus University Franchi, Stefano – Texas A&M University Gomila, Antoni – UIB Guarini, Marcello – University of Windsor Hongladarom, Soraj – Chulalongkorn University Jones, Derek – University of Evansville Mcbride, Neil – De Montfort University Miłkowski, Marcin – Polish Academy of Sciences Piccinini, Gualtiero – University of Missouri-St. Louis Powers, Thomas – University of Delaware Preston, John – University of Reading Primiero, Giuseppe – Middlesex University Schiaffonati, Viola – Politecnico di Milano Schmidt, Colin – University Le Mans Shagrir, Oron – Hebrew University Shanahan, Murray – Imperial College London Simon, Judith – University of Vienna Søraker, Johnny – University of Twente Spence, Edward – Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics Sprevak, Mark – The University of Edinburgh Stahl, Bernd Carsten – De Montfort University Sullins, John – Sonoma State University Vallverdú, Jordi – Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Vosgerau, Gottfried – Institut für Philosophie, Universität Düsseldorf Votsis, Ioannis – Institut für Philosophie, Universität Düsseldorf Waser, Mark – Books International Wheeler, Gregory – LMU, Munich Wiedermann, Jiri – Academy of Sciences Zambak, Aziz F. – Middle East Technical University, Ankara Editorial vii Our invited speakers were Judith Simon (ITU Kopenhagen), 'The challenge of the computational: towards a socio-technical epistemology'; Hector Zenil (Karolinska Institute, Stockholm), 'Information and Computation in Synthetic Biology'; Gregory Chaitin (HCTE/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), 'Conceptual Complexity and Algorithmic Information'; Selmer Bringsjord (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY), Covey Award Winner 2014, 'Two Refutations of Hegemonic Bayesianism'; and Gualterio Piccinini (University of Missouri-St. Louis), Simon Award Winner 2014, 'Computation and the Metaphysics of Mind'. Apart from papers, we also called for symposia and accepted five to be run at IACAP – the organisers of these symposia were responsible for the presentations there, and the symposium papers are not published here in the proceedings. We are very grateful that some high-level symposia were run, namely: – "Anti-reductionist computational metaphors in evolution, metamathematics and the contemporary human self-image" (organiser: Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic) – "Robotics: From Science Fiction to Ethical and Legal Issues" (organisers: Sabine Thuermel, Fiorella Battaglia, Barbara Henry) – "History and philosophy of computing" (organisers: Giuseppe Primiero and Liesbeth De Mol) – "SuchThatCast" (organiser: Johnny Søraker) – "Lightning Rounds" (organiser: Don Berkich) After the conference, the authors of accepted papers were invited to submit full papers. We then ran a second round of online reviews between authors, non-blind this time, which resulted in fruitful and serious exchanges. In the light of these exchanges and comments from the editor, all full papers were revised, mostly several times, and significantly improved – or so we like to think. The revision process ended early November 2014, when each paper had been reviewed at least four times and checked by the editor. As a result of the reviews of the full papers, two submissions were withdrawn and three rejected, resulting in a total of 29 papers. The next review round was from an anonymous reviewer for Springer, who recommended further significant cuts, so after some negotiation we whittled this down to 18 papers, in the end (23 % of the 78 original submissions). Of course, it is somewhat artificial to sort the conference papers into categories, but a few areas of research can be discerned that form the chapters of this volume: (1) philosophy of computing, (2) philosophy of computer science and discovery, (3) philosophy of cognition and intelligence and (4) computing and society. To this editor, it looks like IACAP is relocating itself, now that 'computing' has become a nearly transparent technology and I tend to think that the reflection on the philosophical basics of computing and computer science (Chaps. 1 and 2) can make a useful core for the meetings, while cognition and 'intelligence' are viii Editorial quite separate concerns that call for different methods. This core can perhaps be supplemented by societal and ethical concerns (Chap. 4) – even though these tend to be oversubscribed already, with specialist conferences and associations. We tried to make IACAP a high-level specialist meeting in 2014 and offer you the fruits of this hard work. Where the association will go from here, the future will tell. Struggle and learn! Anatolia College/ACT, Pylaia-Thessaloniki, Greece Vincent C. Müller Contents Part I Philosophy of Computing 1 What Is a Computational Constraint? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Cem Bozşahin 2 Computing Mechanisms and Autopoietic Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Joe Dewhurst 3 Are Gandy Machines Really Local? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Vincenzo Fano, Pierluigi Graziani, Roberto Macrelli, and Gino Tarozzi 4 A Refutation of the Church-Turing Thesis According to Some Interpretation of What the Thesis Says . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Doukas Kapantaïs 5 In What Sense Does the Brain Compute? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Paul Schweizer Part II Philosophy of Computer Science & Discovery 6 Computational Scientific Discovery and Cognitive Science Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Mark Addis, Peter D. Sozou, Peter C. Lane, and Fernand Gobet 7 Discovering Empirical Theories of Modular Software Systems. An Algebraic Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Nicola Angius and Petros Stefaneas 8 Introducing the Doxastically Centered Approach to Formalizing Relevance Bonds in Conditionals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Selmer Bringsjord, John Licato, Daniel Arista, Naveen Sundar Govindarajulu, and Paul F. Bello ix x Contents 9 From Silico to Vitro: Computational Models of Complex Biological Systems Reveal Real-World Emergent Phenomena . . . . . . . . 133 Orly Stettiner Part III Philosophy of Cognition & Intelligence 10 Why We Shouldn't Reason Classically, and the Implications for Artificial Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Douglas Campbell 11 Cognition as Higher-Order Regulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Stefano Franchi 12 Eliminativisms, Languages of Thought, & the Philosophy of Computational Cognitive Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Marcello Guarini 13 A Mechanistic Account of Computational Explanation in Cognitive Science and Computational Neuroscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Marcin Miłkowski 14 Internal Supervision & Clustering: A New Lesson from 'Old' Findings? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Alexandros Tillas Part IV Computing & Society 15 Floridi/Flusser: Parallel Lives in Hyper/Posthistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Vassilis Galanos 16 Machine Ethics and Modal Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Paul F. Bello 17 My Liver Is Broken, Can You Print Me a New One? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Marty J. Wolf and Nir Fresco 18 Robots, Ethics and Software – FOSS vs. Proprietary Licenses . . . . . . . . 271 Marty J. Wolf, Frances Grodzinsky, and Keith W. Miller