In this paper we investigate the role of information machines in the scientific enterprise intended as a social activity. Our discussion is based on a powerful kind of information machines called scientific social agencies, which are multiagent systems of distributed artificial intelligence. Scientific social agency, on the one hand, can provide great benefits to the present common scientific practice but, on the other hand, its development represents a strong and still open technical challenge. This paper shows a coherent framework in (...) which scientific social agency is settled. Moreover, the double role of a scientific social agency in assisting scientists in their activity and in representing the products of their research is illustrated by means of some examples. (shrink)

Designing models of complex phenomena is a difficult task in engineering that can be tackled by composing a number of partial models to produce a global model of the phenomena. We propose to embed the partial models in software agents and to implement their composition as a cooperative negotiation between the agents. The resulting multiagent system provides a global model of a phenomenon. We applied this approach in modelling two complex physiological processes: the heart rate regulation and the glucose-insulin metabolism. (...) Beyond the effectiveness demonstrated in these two applications, the idea of using models associated to software agents to give reason of complex phenomena is in accordance with current tendencies in epistemology, where it is evident an increasing use of computational models for scientific explanation and analysis. Therefore, our approach has not only a practical, but also a theoretical significance: agents embedding models are a technology suitable both to representing and to investigating reality. (shrink)

There are two classical and opposite positions about scientific discovery: the one that conceives scientific discovery activity as fully rational and the one that conceives scientific discovery activity as fully irrational. In the first case, machines are regarded as able to perform the scientific discovery process whereas, in the second case, machines are considered unable to perform any part of the scientific discovery process.We adopt a third intermediate approach that envisages a new role for machines, which are conceived as descriptions (...) of the results of scientific discovery activity. More precisely, the purpose of the paper is to illustrate the multilevel structure of a machine, called creative dynamic agency, that represents the articulated and incremental description of the product of scientific discovery process. The multilevel architecture reflects the composition relation that holds among phenomena described by creative agents that compose creative dynamic agency. (shrink)

The debate on the experimental method, its role, its limits, and its possible applications has recently gained attention in autonomous robotics. If, from the one hand, classical experimental principles, such as repeatability and reproducibility, play as an inspiration for the development of good experimental practices in this research area, from the other hand, some recent analyses have evidenced that rigorous experimental approaches are not yet full part of the research habits in this community. In this paper, in order to give (...) reason of a part of the current experimental practice in autonomous robotics that cannot be satisfactorily accommodated under the traditional concept of controlled experiment, we will advance the notion of explorative experiment. Explorative experiments in this context should be intended as a form of investigation carried out in the absence of a proper theory or theoretical background, where the control of the experimental factors cannot be fully managed from the beginning. We show that this notion arises from the analysis of the experimental activities reported in a significant sample of papers that have been given awards at two of the largest and most impacting robotics research conferences. (shrink)

Impossible Worlds focuses on an exciting new theory in philosophy, with applications in metaphysics, logic, and the theory of meaning. Its central topic is: how do we meaningfully talk and reason about situations which, unbeknownst to us, are impossible? This issue emerges as a central problem in contemporary philosophical accounts of meaning, information, knowledge, belief, fiction, conditionality, and counterfactual supposition. The book is written bytwo of the leading philosophers in the area and contains original research of relevance to professional philosophers (...) and logicians working in metaphysics, philosophy of language, formal logic, and adjacentareas. (shrink)

Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms – “strong” and “weak” reciprocity – that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning (...) the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free-riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a “narrow” and a “wide” reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in “real-world” situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation “in the wild.” In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing. (shrink)

In answering the question 'what is special about the gene' from a literary perspective, the article suggests that if literary appreciation is often seen as a mark of human exceptionalism, knowledge of the gene may undermine this claim. Tracing some of the historical and philosophical complexities that circulate around the word 'gene', the article argues that in one sense 'the gene' plays the lead role in the latest 'story' about heredity to preoccupy novelists, scientists, and the literary and cultural historians (...) who have researched their shared interests and mutual borrowings. Reading Ian McEwan's recent novel Saturday (2005) in terms of the traditions of scientific and literary discourse that it draws upon and weaves together, the article argues that the literary craft may yet pose a distinctive challenge for the understanding of the place of genetics and literature in contemporary culture. (shrink)

Economists and biologists have proposed a distinction between two mechanisms – “strong” and “weak” reciprocity – that may explain the evolution of human sociality. Weak reciprocity theorists emphasize the benefits of long-term cooperation and the use of low-cost strategies to deter free-riders. Strong reciprocity theorists, in contrast, claim that cooperation in social dilemma games can be sustained by costly punishment mechanisms, even in one-shot and finitely repeated games. To support this claim, they have generated a large body of evidence concerning (...) the willingness of experimental subjects to punish uncooperative free-riders at a cost to themselves. In this article, I distinguish between a “narrow” and a “wide” reading of the experimental evidence. Under the narrow reading, punishment experiments are just useful devices to measure psychological propensities in controlled laboratory conditions. Under the wide reading, they replicate a mechanism that supports cooperation also in “real-world” situations outside the laboratory. I argue that the wide interpretation must be tested using a combination of laboratory data and evidence about cooperation “in the wild.” In spite of some often-repeated claims, there is no evidence that cooperation in the small egalitarian societies studied by anthropologists is enforced by means of costly punishment. Moreover, studies by economic and social historians show that social dilemmas in the wild are typically solved by institutions that coordinate punishment, reduce its cost, and extend the horizon of cooperation. The lack of field evidence for costly punishment suggests important constraints about what forms of cooperation can or cannot be sustained by means of decentralised policing. (shrink)

A hyperintensional epistemic logic would take the contents which can be known or believed as more fine-grained than sets of possible worlds. I consider one objection to the idea: Williamson’s Objection from Overfitting. I propose a hyperintensional account of propositions as sets of worlds enriched with topics: what those propositions, and so the attitudes having them as contents, are about. I show that the account captures the conditions under which sentences express the same content; that it can be pervasively applied (...) in formal and mainstream epistemology; and that it is left unscathed by the objection. (shrink)

Moving from a behavioral definition of intelligence, which describes it as the ability to adapt to the surrounding environment and deal effectively with new situations (Anastasi, 1986), this paper explains to what extent the performance obtained by ChatGPT in the linguistic domain can be considered as intelligent behavior and to what extent they cannot. It also explains in what sense the hypothesis of decoupling between cognitive and problem-solving abilities, proposed by Floridi (2017) and Floridi and Chiriatti (2020) should be interpreted. (...) The problem of symbolic grounding (Harnad, 1990) is then addressed to show the problematic relationship between ChatGPT and the natural environment, and thus the impossibility for it to understand the symbols it manipulates. To explain the reasons why ChatGPT does not succeed in this task, an investigation is carried out and a possible solution to the problem in the artificial domain is proposed by making a comparison with the natural ability of living beings to ground their own meanings from some basic cognitive-sensory aspects, which, it is explained, are directly related to the emergence of self-awareness in humans. Thus, the question is raised whether a possible and concrete solution to the Symbol Grounding Problem would involve in the artificial domain the development of cognitive abilities fully comparable to those of humans. Finally, I explain the difficulties that would have to be overcome before such a level could be reached, since human cognitive capacities are intimately linked to intersubjectivity and intercorporeality. (shrink)

According to Chomsky, creativity is a critical property of human language, particularly the aspect of ?the creative use of language? concerning the appropriateness to a situation. How language can be creative but appropriate to a situation is an unsolvable mystery from the Chomskyan point of view. We propose that language appropriateness can be explained by considering the role of the human capacity for Mental Time Travel at its foundation, together with social and ecological intelligences within a triadic language-grounding system. Our (...) proposal is based on the change of perspective from the analysis of individual sentences to the flux of speech in which the temporal dimension of language is much more relevant. (shrink)

Objective correlates—behavioral, functional, and neural—provide essential tools for the scientific study of consciousness. But reliance on these correlates should not lead to the ‘fallacy of misplaced objectivity’: the assumption that only objective properties should and can be accounted for objectively through science. Instead, what needs to be explained scientifically is what experience is intrinsically— its subjective properties—not just what we can do with it extrinsically. And it must be explained; otherwise the way experience feels would turn out to be magical (...) rather than physical. We argue that it is possible to account for subjective properties objectively once we move beyond cognitive functions and realize what experience is and how it is structured. Drawing on integrated information theory, we show how an objective science of the subjective can account, in strictly physical terms, for both the essential properties of every experience and the specific properties that make particular experiences feel the way they do. (shrink)

Understanding Institutions proposes a new unified theory of social institutions that combines the best insights of philosophers and social scientists who have written on this topic. Francesco Guala presents a theory that combines the features of three influential views of institutions: as equilibria of strategic games, as regulative rules, and as constitutive rules. -/- Guala explains key institutions like money, private property, and marriage, and develops a much-needed unification of equilibrium- and rules-based approaches. Although he uses game theory concepts, (...) the theory is presented in a simple, clear style that is accessible to a wide audience of scholars working in different fields. Outlining and discussing various implications of the unified theory, Guala addresses venerable issues such as reflexivity, realism, Verstehen, and fallibilism in the social sciences. He also critically analyses the theory of “looping effects” and “interactive kinds” defended by Ian Hacking, and asks whether it is possible to draw a demarcation between social and natural science using the criteria of causal and ontological dependence. Focusing on current debates about the definition of marriage, Guala shows how these abstract philosophical issues have important practical and political consequences. -/- Moving beyond specific cases to general models and principles, Understanding Institutions offers new perspectives on what institutions are, how they work, and what they can do for us. (shrink)

v. 1. A-B -- v. 2. C -- v. 3. D-F --- v. 4. G-L -- v. 5. M-Q -- v. 6. R-Z.

In this paper we reply to arguments of Kroon (“Characterization and Existence in Modal Meinongianism”. Grazer Philosophische Studien 86, 23–34) to the effect that Modal Meinongianism cannot do justice to Meinongian claims such as that the golden mountain is golden, and that it does not exist.

Pragmatic vindicatory genealogies provide both a cause and a rationale and can thus affect the space of reasons. But how far is the space of reasons affected by this kind of genealogical argument? What normative and evaluative implications do these arguments have? In this paper, I unpack this issue into three different sub-questions and explain what kinds of reasons they provide, for whom are these reasons, and for what. In relation to this final sub-question I argue, most importantly, that these (...) arguments are ambiguous about what they give us reasons for, meaning that they can be interpreted both as justifications for recognizing the normative standing of certain norms, values, and practices - and thus for living by them - and as excuses for those that do so. I illustrate this point by reference to the genealogical vindication of honour cultures, showing how the vindicatory argument can illuminate such case as one of excusing moral ignorance. Drawing on legal theory and moral philosophy, I show that different evaluative and normative implications hang on the result of the interpretation as either justification or excuse, and show that this ambiguity is a virtue rather than a limitation. (shrink)

Manufacturing and industry practices are undergoing an unprecedented revolution as a consequence of the convergence of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, cloud computing, virtual and augmented reality, among others. This fourth industrial revolution is similarly changing the practices and capabilities of operators in their industrial environments. This paper introduces and explores the notion of the Operator 4.0 as well as how this novel way of conceptualizing the human operator necessarily implicates human values in the technologies that constitute it. (...) The design approach known as value sensitive design (VSD) is used to explore how these Operator 4.0 technologies can be designed for human values. Expert elicitation surveys were used to determine the values of industry stakeholders and examples of how the VSD methodology can be adopted by engineers in order to design for these values is illustrated. The results provide preliminary adoption strategies that industrial teams can take to Operator 4.0 technology for human values. (shrink)

Two university English seminars were video-recorded to provide data for a pilot project investigating how English is produced or 'actualized' in teaching and learning encounters. The project is positioned within three contexts: national policy about higher education teaching; current research about higher education pedagogy; and, the history and politics of university English. The main aim of the article is to explicate a methodology that takes as its data actual moments of teaching, captured on video tape, and the teachers' commentary on (...) them. It analyses these records with reference to theories about rhetoric. (shrink)

In this paper, we take a meta-theoretical stance and aim to compare and assess two conceptual frameworks that endeavor to explain phenomenal experience. In particular, we compare Feinberg & Mallatt’s Neurobiological Naturalism (NN) and Tononi’s and colleagues' Integrated Information Theory (IIT), given that the former pointed out some similarities between the two theories (Feinberg & Mallatt 2016c-d). To probe their similarity, we first give a general introduction to both frameworks. Next, we expound a ground plan for carrying out our analysis. (...) We move on to articulate a philosophical profile of NN and IIT, addressing their ontological commitments and epistemological foundations. Finally, we compare the two point-by-point, also discussing how they stand on the issue of artificial consciousness. (shrink)

The experimental approach in economics is a driving force behind some of the most exciting developments in the field. The 'experimental revolution' was based on a series of bold philosophical premises which have remained until now mostly unexplored. This book provides the first comprehensive analysis and critical discussion of the methodology of experimental economics, written by a philosopher of science with expertise in the field. It outlines the fundamental principles of experimental inference in order to investigate their power, scope and (...) limitations. The author demonstrates that experimental economists have a lot to gain by discussing openly the philosophical principles that guide their work, and that philosophers of science have a lot to learn from their ingenious techniques devised by experimenters in order to tackle difficult scientific problems. (shrink)

In the last couple of years, two important books concerning moral progress arrived in the press, namely Philp Kitcher’s Moral Progress and Victor Kumar’s and Richmond Campbell’s A Better Ape. In this critical notice, I review both books and problematize the way in which they respectively try to tie together moral progress and the theory of evolution.

C’è prima la persona o prima la società? Per non cadere in una risposta dualistica, bisogna risalire alle radici antropologiche della vita sociale, che stanno alla base delle diverse forme che essa storicamente può assumere. Questo saggio esamina il rapporto tra le tendenze socializzanti innate e le virtù relazionali, alla luce di un’antropologia integrale, nella quale la persona umana è considerata nella sua globalità somatico-psichico-spirituale. Vengono qui esaminati il tessuto di legami in cui è inserita la nostra esistenza e la (...) responsabilità che compete a ognuno nei confronti del cosiddetto capitale sociale. (shrink)

Can we say we live in a post-digital condition? It depends. This paper sets out to distinguish between the current mass digital culture and an authentic post-digital culture. If we mean “post-digital” as the full internalization and awareness of the result of the so-called digital revolution, then it is necessary a philosophical work to discuss related problems, identify the causes and propose solutions. An authentic philosophy of digital will, however, have to start from a clarification of the terms and basic (...) objects of its investigation. Here media theory is inserted as an analytical tool: the purpose of this essay is to outline a road map for a good media theory that interfaces with questions of definition of digital, also in light of the notions of space, time, and matter. As will be seen, the description given here for a “good media theory” does, in fact, coincide with an already existing – and inserted in the contemporary debate – school. In conclusion we will try to delineate the field of philosophical inquiry opened by the clarification brought by the previous analysis, and to suggest a general framework within which philosophy will have to move in order to finally reach the authentic post-digital condition. (shrink)

This book is the first translation into the English language of a comprehensive study of opera and its constituent parts by an accomplished writer of the Eighteenth Century. Francesco Algarotti was concerned with developing opera as drama and a move away from the elaborate formality of the Baroque to a more naturalistic style. The Essay in its original Italian had considerable influence on the reform opera of Christoph Willibald Gluck.