Context: A central motivation behind various embodied, extended, and enactive (4E) approaches to cognition is to ground our understanding of minds and cognition within the biological structures that give rise to life. Because of this, their advocates often claim a natural kinship with dynamical and developmental systems theories. However, these accounts also explicitly or implicitly privilege individual organisms in ways that contrast with many of the insights of systems and developmental systems approaches to biology. Problem: The prioritization of individual organisms (...) within 4E approaches to cognition contrasts with the default entangled structure of biological systems associated with cognitive agency. We provide means for 4E cognitive science to move beyond an individual-centred view of cognitive agency. Method: We first identify and problematize individual-centredness within various predominant 4E approaches by comparison with biological research and developmental systems theory. Subsequently, we offer conceptual resources from the field of ecological research for understanding cognitive agency beyond the predominant focus on individual organisms. Results: Cognitive agency may be understood without privileging individual organisms by reading nonequilibrium maintenance in terms of a dynamic differentiation instead of individual organismic autonomy. This form of organizational structure corresponds to the notion of sympoiesis from ecological research. Implications: Approaching cognitive agency without privileging individual organisms should be invaluable to advocates of 4E cognition seeking to ground notions of cognition and mind within contemporary biological research. Constructivist content: We seek to expand upon existing constructivist perspectives on the organizing principles of cognitive agency, such as sensorimotor embodiment and autopoiesis, arguing that meta-organismic cognitive agents (including humans) embody distributed relations beyond the privileging of individual organisms. Key words: 4E cognition, autopoiesis, cognitive agency, developmental systems theory, enactivism, extended mind thesis, holobionts, sympoeisis. (shrink)

The Many-Interacting-Worlds (MIW) approach to a quantum theory without wave functions proposed in [8] leads naturally to numerical integrators of the Schrödinger equation on comoving grids. As yet, little is known about concrete MIW models for more than one spatial dimension and/or more than one particle. In honour of Detlef Dürr, we report on a further development of the MIW approach to treat arbitrary degrees of freedom and provide a numerical proof of concept for ground states in 2d. The latter (...) is part of a systematic numerical study [22] that includes also 1d ground and excited states. With this step towards the treatment of higher degrees of freedom we hope to stimulate their further study. (shrink)

The book has two parts: one metaphysical, the other epistemological. The metaphysical part is largely concerned with realism issues. It starts with realism about universals, dismissing Plato's notorious ‘one over many’ problem. Several chapters argue for a fairly uncompromisingly realist view of the external physical world of commonsense and science. Both the nonfactualism of moral noncognitivism and positivistic instrumentalism, and deflationism about truth, are found to rest on antirealisms about their subject matters that are hard to characterize. A case is (...) presented for moral realism. Various biological realisms are considered. Finally, an argument is presented for an unfashionable biological essentialism. The epistemological part of the book argues against the a priori and for a Quinean naturalism. The intuitions that so dominate ‘armchair philosophy’ are empirical not a priori. There is an emphasis throughout the book on distinguishing metaphysical issues about what there is and what it's like from semantic issues about meaning, truth, and reference. Another central theme, captured in the title, is that we should ‘put metaphysics first’. We should approach epistemology and semantics from a metaphysical perspective rather than vice versa. The epistemological turn in modern philosophy and the linguistic turn in contemporary philosophy were something of disasters. (shrink)

Michael Dummett; Discussions: Chairman's Address: Basic Law V*, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 243–252, https:/.

The paper defends the doctrine that Linnaean taxa, including species, have essences that are, at least partly, underlying intrinsic, mostly genetic, properties. The consensus among philosophers of biology is that such essentialism is deeply wrong, indeed incompatible with Darwinism. I argue that biological generalizations about the morphology, physiology, and behavior of species require structural explanations that must advert to these essential properties. The paper concludes by summarizing my responses to the objection that, according to current “species concepts,” species are relational, (...) and to the objection that essentialism cannot accommodate features of Darwinism associated with variation and change. (shrink)

One aim philosophers have in constructing moral theories is to identify the natural or non-Moral characteristics that make actions right or obligatory, Things good, Or persons virtuous. Yet we have no clear understanding of what it is for certain of a thing's non-Moral properties to be responsible for its moral properties. Given the recent interest in the concept of supervenience one might think that the dependence of moral on natural properties could be explained in terms of it. Unfortunately, None of (...) the definitions of supervenience offered so far is adequate to this task, And indeed, There is some reason to think that this dependence relation is ultimately mysterious. (shrink)

Bach fails to give a satisfactory pragmatic account of referential uses of definite descriptions because he does not explain how a description’s quantificational meaning plays a “key role” in those uses. Bach’s criticism that my semantic account does not explain how the hearer understands a description is misguided. Bach’s denial that a pragmatic account is committed to the attributive use being more fundamental detaches meaning from use in an unacceptable way.

Quantum mechanics has sometimes been taken to be an empiricist (vs. realist) theory. I state the empiricist's argument, then outline a recently noticed type of measurement--protective measurement--that affords a good reply for the realist. This paper is a reply to scientific empiricism (about quantum mechanics), but is neither a refutation of that position, nor an argument in favor of scientific realism. Rather, my aim is to place realism and empiricism on an even score in regards to quantum theory.

The experience of a reward appears to enhance memory for recent prior events, adaptively making that information more available to guide future decision-making. Here, we tested whether reward enhances memory for associative item-location information and also whether the effect of reward spreads to other categorically-related but unrewarded items. Participants earned either points (Experiment 1) or money (Experiment 2) through a time-estimation reward task, during which stimuli-location pairings around a 2D-ring were shown followed by either high-value or low-value rewards. All stimuli (...) were then tested for location memory or recognition (yes/no), immediately and after a 24-hour delay. Across both experiments (combined analysis), there was a robust improvement in location memory following high-value rewards, even though evidence supporting this effect was reliable in Experiment 2 but not in Experiment 1. The memory-enhancing effect of reward was observed on both the immediate and delayed location-memory tests. Reward-enhanced memory for both directly rewarded stimuli and categorically related stimuli that were not directly rewarded. No reliable effect of reward value on yes/no recognition-memory performance was observed in either experiment. We hypothesise that reward enhances the consolidation of recent experience and conceptually related memories to make these more available for future decisions. (shrink)

It is argued that an instrumentalist notion of proof such as that represented in Hilbert's viewpoint is not obligated to satisfy the conservation condition that is generally regarded as a constraint on Hilbert's Program. A more reasonable soundness condition is then considered and shown not to be counter-exemplified by Godel's First Theorem. Finally, attention is given to the question of what a theory is; whether it should be seen as a "list" or corpus of beliefs, or as a method for (...) selecting beliefs. The significance of this question for assessing "intensional" results like Godel's Second Theorem, and their bearing on Hilbert's Program are discussed. (shrink)

In the mid 1980s it was apparent that the need for organ donors exceeded those willing to donate. Some University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) physicians initiated discussion of possible new organ donor categories including individuals pronounced dead by traditional cardiac criteria. However, they reached no conclusion and dropped the discussion. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s, four cases arose in which dying patients or their families requested organ donation following the elective removal of mechanical ventilation. Controversy surrounding (...) these cases precipitated open discussion of the use of organ donors pronounced dead on the basis of cardiac criteria. Prolonged deliberations by many committees in the absence of precedent ultimately resulted in what is, to our knowledge, the country's first policy for organ donation following elective removal of life support. The policy is intricate and conservative. Care was taken to include as many interested parties as possible in an effort to achieve representative and broad based support. This paper describes the development of the UPMC policy on non-heart-beating organ donation. (shrink)

Poststructuralism and complexity are plural and diverse modes of thought that share a common subscription to the `anteriority of radical relationality'. They nonetheless subscribe to a different ethic of life because they address the anteriority of radical relationality in different ways. Complexity remains strategic in its bid to become a power-knowledge of the laws of becoming. It derives that strategic ethic from its scientific interest in the implicate order of non-linearity that is said to subvert Newtonian science. Poststructuralism is poetic. (...) It derives its poetic ethic from Heidegger and from the reworking of orphic and tragic sensibilities to radical relationality with the radically non-relational. Observing that all poetry is complexity avant la lettre, the article illustrates these points with the Odyssey and concludes that while complexity is ultimately concerned with fitness, poststructuralism is preoccupied with justice. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “A Moving Boundary, a Plastic Core: A Contribution to the Third Wave of Extended-Mind Research” by Timotej Prosen. Abstract: We explore both some novel claims made by Prosen’s account of plastic cores and some overlaps between his and other accounts of third-wave extended mind. In the first instance we discuss whether the Markov blanket formalism should be regarded as incompatible with a third-wave extended view. Secondly, we discuss whether Prosen’s proposal of a plastic core (...) quite meets the radical departure of the third wave from organism-centeredness - or whether Prosen’s contribution might be more aptly considered as a compromise between second- and third-wave extended mind. (shrink)

I focus on three preoccupations of recent writings on proof. -/- I. The role and possible effects of empirical reasoning in mathematics. Do recent developments (specifically, the computer-assisted proof of the 4CT) point to something essentially new as regards the need for and/or effects of using broadly empirical and inductive reasoning in mathematics? In particular, should we see such things as the computer-assisted proof of the 4CT as pointing to the existence of mathematical truths of which we cannot have a (...) priori knowledge? -/- 2. The role of formalization in proof. What are the patterns ofinference according to which mathematical reasoning naturally proceeds? Are they of 'local' character (i.e. sensitive to the subject-matter of the reasoning concerned) or 'global' character (i.e. invariant across all subject-matters)? Finally, what if any relationship is there (a) between the patterns of inference manifest in a proof and its explanatory capacity and (b) between explanatory capacity and rigor? -/- 3. Diagrams and their role in mathematical reasoning. What essentially is diagrammatic reasoning, and what is the nature and basis of its usefulness? Can it play a justificative role in the development of mathematical knowledge and, more particularly, in genuine proof? Finally, does the use of diagrammatic reasoning force an adjustment either in our conception of rigor or in our view of its importance? (shrink)

We delineate the distinctness of sympoiesis from adaptive notions of autopoiesis and explain why we see it as helpful to the exploration and explanation of agentive and adaptive cognitive systems.

Dieser Text wurde verfasst für einen Workshop, der im September 2015 an der TU Darmstadt unter Leitung von Petra Gehring stattfand und der Theorie von Bernhard Waldenfels gewidmet war. Im Zentrum stand das komplexe Werk Antwortregister von 1994. Dem Verfasser oblag es, ausgehend von seinem Buch Verzeihung denken. Die verkannte Grundlage humaner Verhältnisse, das Netzwerk der Verbindungen zu Bernhard Waldenfels’ Theorie der Responsivität herauszuarbeiten.

This note briefly responds to Devitt’s (2008) riposte to Collins’s (2008a) argument that linguistic realism prima facie fails to accommodate unvoiced elements within syntax. It is argued that such elements remain problematic. For it remains unclear how conventions might target the distribution of PRO and how they might explain hierarchical structure that is presupposed by such distribution and which is not witnessed in concrete strings.