The assumption that natural selection alone is sufficient to explain not only which traits get fixed in a population/species, but also how they develop, has been questioned since Darwin’s times, and increasingly in the last decades. Alternative theories, linked to genetic and phenotypic processes, or to the theory of complex systems, have been proposed to explain the rise of the phenotypic variety upon which natural selection acts. In this article, we illustrate the current state of the issue and we propose (...) a logical space based on phenotypic robustness that allows a classification of evolutionary phenomena and can provide a framework for unifying all these accounts. (shrink)

Los conceptos de evolución y cambio evolutivo son a la vez laxos y polisémicos: se aplican a fenómenos muy diferentes y no siempre se definen con precisión. La aplicación extendida del paradigma neo-darwinista clásico, además, suele imponer un esquema adaptacionista al análisis de los hechos evolutivos, en el cual las funciones juegan un papel lógicamente anterior a los rasgos y sus formas. En este artículo proponemos, como etapa previa a la formulación de hipótesis sobre las causas del cambio, un modelo (...) de espacio forma-función que pueda responder a preguntas como cuándo se da un cambio en los rasgos de una arquitectura biológica y de qué tipo son estos cambios. Un modelo de este tipo nos permite ver claramente cuándo se da un cambio en la forma o en la función y qué alcance evolutivo tiene. (shrink)

Discussions about the extended mind have ‘extended’ in various directions in the last decades. While applied to other aspects of human cognition and even consciousness, the extended-mind hypothesis has also been criticized, as it questions fundamental ideas such as the image of a dual world, divided between an external and an internal domain by the border of ‘skin and skull’, the idea of a localized and constant decision center, and the role of internal representations. We suggest that the main virtue (...) of the hypothesis is not as a theory per se, but as a vaccine against persistent metaphysical prejudices about the mind’s structure, functions and borders. Being an hypothesis about the most efficient ways to combine resources and problems, and not a theory about the mind’s a-priori constitution, the extended mind view moves the focus from ontology to pragmatics and helps purify philosophy of mind from metaphysical remainders. (shrink)

The great advances of the last decades both in cognitive theories and in evolutionary biology have not yet fully merged. Most evolutionary hypotheses around the mind still rely on classical cognitivism, while most theories of cognition still look for adaptive explanations. We believe that the merging of novel cognitive theories into a pluralistic account can greatly improve our understanding of both what cognition is and how it evolved.

Darwin’s claim that Natural Selection, through optimization of fitness, explains complex biological design has not yet been properly formalized. Alan Grafen’s Formal Darwinism Project aims at providing such a formalization and at demonstrating that fitness maximization is coherent with results from Population Genetics, usually interpreted as denying it. We suggest that Grafen’s proposal suffers from some limitations linked to its concept of design as optimized fitness. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose a classification of evolutionary facts based on (...) a bi-dimensional complexity space, which adds robustness to fitness as measure of the quality of a design. In this space, each point represents an organismic architecture, and movement between two points would be an evolutionary fact. Natural Selection explains movement along the fitness axis, while non-selective mechanisms explain movement on the robustness axis. Moreover, we propose a thermodynamic metaphor to draw parallelisms between notions of fitness and entropy, robustness and energy, and movement in this space and reversible and irreversible cycles. We argue that this metaphor illustrates different evolutionary processes usually overlooked by proposals of formalization of Darwinian theory, such Grafen’s Formal Darwinism Project. (shrink)

Despite the growing interest in sentience, especially regarding sentience in non-human animals, there is little agreement around its evolutionary origin and distribution, ontological status or ethical relevance. One aspect of this work-in-progress situation is a panoply of definitions of sentience to be found in the literature, from intensional ones appealing to ontological features (such as awareness, agency, consciousness) to implicit extensional ones based on physiological, morphological or behavioural features. We review and classify some of the most common definitions of sentience (...) to underline how they inevitably rely on pragmatical interests and ontological commitments which, when not explicitly declared, lead to pitfalls and fallacies when the definition is applied in practice. We claim that the obstacles, impasses and complications in the definition of sentience are consubstantial to its interest- and theory-laden, subjective nature. We suggest that, given these features, each definition should only be used in the limited epistemic and practical area it is produced for, while the general discourse around sentience is better developed through metaphorical rather than definitional language. (shrink)

Questo articolo rilegge la letteratura critica e sociologica su algoritmi e IA alla luce di teorie sociali antropocentriche intorno al potere e alle sue dimensioni. Utilizzando come punto di partenza la classica distinzione concettuale tra potere di (agency) e potere su (dominio), illustro due teorizzazioni principali dell’agency degli algoritmi, che qui chiamo “reticolare” e “culturale”, e concettualizzo quattro dimensioni del dominio algoritmico: coercizione opaca, autorità computazionale, condizionamento strutturale e governamentalità dei dati.

La démocratie représentative ne va plus de soi. Le courant libéral au pouvoir pratique l'exclusion et l'enfermement : la légalité le tue, il triche en Amérique, il triche en Italie. Le courant socialiste, seul, assume la révolte morale des Droits de l'Homme. Mais il s'avère incapable par la force d'une loi légitimée à un échelon national de maîtriser une économie mondiale liée à la démocratie verticale ; le régime de la loi égale pour tous, fait sourire la canaille et pleurer (...) l'électeur. Comment imaginer un complément de démocratie horizontale assurant une Europe nouvelle pour demain? (shrink)

El proyecto del ‘Darwinismo Formal’ de Alan Grafen propone una formulación matemática de la teoría de Darwin que pretende demostrar que la selección natural moldea los rasgos fenotípicos a través de la maximización de la eficacia. El proyecto de Grafen reposa sobre tres premisas: la selección natural es la única fuerza que moldea los fenotipos; la eficacia es la única medida de le evolución; y el diseño biológico surge como resultado de un proceso de optimización selectiva. En este trabajo argumentamos (...) que estas tres premisas limitan la aplicabilidad del modelo a los hechos evolutivos más simples. Esto se debe a que Grafen implícitamente presupone un concepto de eficacia que es a la vez causa y efecto de las novedades fenotípicas; lo que, por un lado, vacía la teoría de Darwin de poder explicativo y, por el otro, lleva a ignorar la potencial contribución de fuerzas evolutivas no selectivas en la configuración de la complejidad biológica. Para superar estos escollos del proyecto de del Darwinismo Formal - que son además comunes a todos los modelos formales adaptacionistas - proponemos sustituir el concepto causal de eficacia por el de robustez, definiendo así el diseño biológico como forma y función en lugar de como maximización de la eficacia. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic poses extraordinary public health challenges. In order to respond to such challenges, most democracies have relied on so-called ‘evidence-based’ policies, which supposedly devolve to science the burden of their justification. However, the biomedical sciences can only provide a theory-laden evidential basis, while reliable statistical data for policy support is often scarce. Therefore, scientific evidence alone cannot legitimise COVID-19 public health policies, which are ultimately based on political decisions. Given this inevitable input on policy-making, the risk of arbitrariness (...) is ubiquitous and democratic scrutiny becomes essential to counter it. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the standards of scientific and democratic scrutiny have been, as a matter of fact, substantially lowered. This erosion potentially damages democracy. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:Public health emergencies are fraught by epistemic uncertainty, which raises policy issues of how to handle that uncertainty and devise sustainable public health responses. Among such responses, a herd immunity policy might be an option. Particularly before the development of vaccines, the current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the polarized nature of the political debate concerning the ethical feasibility of herd immunity strategies. This article provides a conceptual framework tailored to uncover the ethical rationale behind such strategies. Clarity on this issue (...) is important in order to facilitate the terms of the political debate when tackling future health emergencies. (shrink)

La sociologie de la connaissance se présente chez Rousseau d'abord comme une action régulatrice de la société sur la connaissance, puis comme un pouvoir du monopole de la connaissance politique chez les fondateurs de la société légitime. Le siècle entier admire la raison et Rousseau répond que la raison est une construction sociale, qu'elle est une légitimation de l'inégalité économique, puis d'une situation de pouvoir de fait. Par quelle étrange nécessité, la première sociologie critique de la culture se transformera-t-elle en (...) une construction sociale de la tyrannie? Chaque moment de la critique sociale implique dans sa richesse un moment de dérive qui s'éclairera par les temps ultérieurs. (shrink)

Recommended: Edo Airoldi, David M. Blei, Stephen E. Fienberg, Anna Goldenberg, Eric P. Xing and Alice X. Zheng (eds.), Statistical Network Analysis: Models, Issues, and New Directions [Disclaimer: contains one of my papers .] Aaron Clauset and Cristopher Moore, "Accuracy and Scaling Phenomena in Internet Mapping", cond-mat/0410059 = Physical Review Letters 94 (2005).

A well-established tradition has argued that it is not legitimate to attribute to Parmenides a Fregean semantics, i.e. the distinction between ‘naming’ and ‘meaning’. Nonetheless, Parmenides claims more than once (B 8.53, B 9.1) that mortalsdo namereality, although incorrectly. As many scholars have emphasised, because it is fair neither to conclude that mortals’ names are ‘empty names’ nor dismiss Opinion's account (i.e., broadly speaking, the mortals’ account of reality) itself as meaningless, it seems that Parmenides is suggesting that some kind (...) of distinction between what names refer to and what names mean must be drawn. In view of this, what is Parmenides’ account of names?My suggestion is that in order to explain the Eleatic philosophy of language (and the Eleatic account of names) a step back is required. More specifically, Parmenides’ epistemology has to be taken into account. Indeed, if we assume that Parmenides is arguing for an ‘epistemological disjunctivism’ – such that the veridical and truthful state and the erroneous and deceptive state are essentially different – it will be clear that he is further arguing for what could be defined as a ‘semantic disjunctivism’, so that true speech and false speech are essentially different as well. (shrink)

Cilj ovog rada je da razmotrimo zašto, i na koji način se Kvajn pozicionira između logičkih pozitivista i epistemoloških nihilista u pogledu shvatanja empirijskog svedočanstva. Naime, on će na nov način formulisati kriterijume opservacionalnosti s namerom da prevaziđe probleme koji su za logički pozitivizam bili nepremostivi, a da time ne žrtvuje objektivnost nauke poljuljanu krahom tradicionalnog pristupa epistemološkim pitanjima. Privučeni provokativnošću Kvajnovog istovremenog ispoljavanja radikalnih, ali i konzervativnih tendencija, odnosno namere da održi balans između stanovišta tradicionalne filozofije i epistemološkog nihilizma, (...) nastojaćemo da ispitamo koliko je Kvajn uspešan u svojoj zamisli. U zavisnosti od odgovora na to pitanje ocenićemo značaj i relevantnost kvajnovskog naturalističkog pristupa za empirističku epistemologiju. (shrink)

Odor naming is enhanced in communities where communication about odors is a central part of daily life (e.g., wine experts, flavorists, and some hunter‐gatherer groups). In this study, we investigated how expert knowledge and daily experience affect the ability to name odors in a group of experts that has not previously been investigated in this context—Iranian herbalists; also called attars—as well as cooks and laypeople. We assessed naming accuracy and consistency for 16 herb and spice odors, collected judgments of odor (...) perception, and evaluated participants' odor meta‐awareness. Participants' responses were overall more consistent and accurate for more frequent and familiar odors. Moreover, attars were more accurate than both cooks and laypeople at naming odors, although cooks did not perform significantly better than laypeople. Attars' perceptual ratings of odors and their overall odor meta‐awareness suggest they are also more attuned to odors than the other two groups. To conclude, Iranian attars—but not cooks—are better odor namers than laypeople. They also have greater meta‐awareness and differential perceptual responses to odors. These findings further highlight the critical role that expertise and type of experience have on olfactory functions. (shrink)

U ovom radu razmatraju se pravi ciljevi tzv. medjunarodne zajednice na Balkanu, pod kojom se zapravo podrazumevaju Sjedinjene Americke Drzave Kao jedina preostala super sila, i Evropska unija, u kojoj kljucnu ulogu imaju Francuska, Velika Britanija i Nemacka. Pisac polazi od uverenja da stvarne, a narocito dugorocne namere ovih sila treba prevashodno izvoditi iz onoga sto one cine, pa tek onda uzimali u obzir i ono sto se javno ili tajno govorilo ili nagovestavalo. Analizom veceg broja primera na Balkanu i (...) u drugim delovima sveta pisac dolazi do neocekivanog ishoda. Dok su se velike zapadne sile na recima zalagale za multietnicnost i ocuvanje multietnickih drzava, na delu su postupale upravo suprotno: ne samo sto su podsticale bujanje nacionalizma i separatizma, nego su i pospesile i priznale raspad triju evropskih federacija na 22 manje-vise nacionalne drzave. I dok su se na recima prividno zalagale za tzv. demokratizaciju, u praksi su ne samo podrzavale autoritarne rezime nego su i same na tlu Balkana demokratiju poistovetile s okupacijom. (shrink)