This paper offers an introduction to poststructuralist interpretivist research in information systems, through a poststructuralist theoretical reading of the phenomenon and experience of social networking websites, such as Facebook. This is undertaken through an exploration of how loyally a social networking profile can represent the essence of an individual, and whether Platonic notions of essence, and loyalty of copy, are disturbed by the nature of a social networking profile, in ways described by poststructuralist thinker Deleuze’s notions of the reversal (...) of Platonism. In bringing a poststructuralist critique to such hugely successful and popular social information systems, the paper attempts to further open up the black box of the computer ‘user’, extend interpretive approaches to information systems research to embrace poststructuralism, and explore how notions of the Self might be reflected through engagement with information system (IS), and how an IS appreciation of the phenomenon of global social networking may benefit from embracing such a poststructuralist approach. (shrink)

Svijest o tehničkoj reproduktibilnosti umjetničkog djela povela nas je iz područja promišljanja umjetničkog djela prema estetizaciji svakodnevice , društvu spektakla, mekdonaldizaciji i diznijevskoj amerikanizaciji kulture cijeloga svijeta.Umnažanje je postalo ponavljanje koje zavodi, odnosno uspostavlja nove odnose kulturne i svake druge ovisnosti. Pokazalo se da u svijetu »množina« vladaju zakonitosti koje određuju današnjeg čovjeka više nego je to filozofija spremna detektirati. Snaga i uvjerljivost epa danas je sadržana u malim sloganima, uz pomoć kojih se upravlja javnim mnijenjem i masama massmedijski oblikovanih (...) potrošača informacija. Slogani su sonde pomoću kojih globalne korporacije osvajaju strukture mišljenja i govora. Umnažanje reklamnih poruka, političkih slogana, ratnohuškačkih rečenica i spektakularnih ispraznosti – završava u copy/paste kulturi, koja, nesvjesna mehanizama i tehnologija, polako ali sigurno počinje zauzimati mjesto na policama dućana globalnih trgovaca. McLuhanovo djelo "Mechanical Bride" prvo je na ozbiljan način promišljalo značenje koje naizgled obični reklamni slogani mogu imati na oblikovanje svjesne i nesvjesne pozicije potrošača. Analizom njegova pristupa u ovom manje poznatom djelu te usporedbom s nekim indikativnim suvremenim pojavama hrvatske i svjetske javnosti – ocrtava se kontekst kojega suvremeno filozofijsko mišljenje ne smije ispustiti iz vida.The awareness about the reproductiveness of artwork led us from the field of discussion about artwork to the aesthetization of the everyday , to a society of spectacles, to McDonaldization and the Disneyesque Americanization of the entire world culture.Multiplication became a seductive repetition, setting up new relations of cultural and other addiction. It seems that in a world of “plurals” there are laws that define today’s man more than philosophy is prepared to detect. The strength and convincingness of epics is sublimated into little slogans, used to manipulate public opinion and hordes of information consumers shaped by the mass media. Slogans are really probes with which global corporations conquer the structures of opinion and speech. The multiplication of advertising messages, political slogans, warmongering sentences and spectacular meaninglessness – ends up in a copy/paste culture, which is, unaware of mechanisms and technologies, slowly but surely starting to take its place on the store-shelves of global marketers. McLuhan’s work "Mechanical Bride" was the first to seriously consider the meaning that the seemingly common advertising slogans can have for the shaping of a conscious and unconscious position of the consumers. By analyzing his approach in this less known work and comparing it with certain suggestive modern phenomena in the Croatian and world public – we outline a context, which should not be eft out of the sight of the modern philosophic thought. (shrink)

Through cultural transmission, repeated learning by new individuals transforms cultural information, which tends to become increasingly compressible . Existing diffusion chain studies include in their design two processes that could be responsible for this tendency: learning and reproducing . This paper manipulates the presence of learning in a simple iterated drawing design experiment. We find that learning seems to be the causal factor behind the increase in compressibility observed in the transmitted information, while reproducing is a source of (...) random heritable innovations. Only a theory invoking these two aspects of cultural learning will be able to explain human culture's fundamental balance between stability and innovation. (shrink)

We present the consequences of the assumption of the classical and quantum nature of information storing and processing in the brain. These assumptions result in different behaviours of consciousness under a hypothetical brain copy experiment. The subject is important in the context of ‘mind uploading’ considerations.

In order to distribute our thoughts and feelings, we must make intelligible and distributable copies of them. From approximately 1375 to 1450, certain Europeans started fully mechanized replication of texts and images, based on predecessor “smaller” technologies. What they started became the most powerful means for the distribution, storage, and retrieval of knowledge in history, up until the invention of digital means. We have scant information about the initiation of print technologies in the period up to Gutenberg, and the (...) picture of Gutenberg that we have has become a great deal more complicated than hitherto. There has not been, however, an approach to the “pre-printing” period in terms of the history of idea or intellectual history. After a brief survey of established approaches, this essay argues that distribution by impression, or print, is bound up with ancient metaphors for understanding communication by the making of multiples. I suggest that there is a rich field of study for printing history in the sophisticated concepts of reality that medieval and late Scholastic philosophy developed. These concepts helped to express and develop a desire or need for communication that led to the technology of replicating texts and images for wide and continued distribution. (shrink)

Appeal to standard set theory in minimalist syntax is shown to be in conflict with the goal of analyzing dependency formation, a.k.a. movement, as involving genuine constituent copies. The underlying tension is due to extensionality, which—other things being equal—favors a perspective on dependencies in terms of multidominance. The above argument is developed against the backdrop of a recent exposition of minimalist syntax :229–261, 2019), which can be seen as exemplary. The resulting critical assessment should be taken as removing obstacles on (...) the way toward proper minimalist foundations for syntactic theory. (shrink)

BackgroundApproval of the research proposal by an ethical review committee from both sponsoring and host countries is a generally agreed requirement in externally sponsored research.However, capacity for ethics review is not universal. Aim of this study was to identify opinions and views of the members serving in ethical review and ethics committees in Sri Lanka on informed consent, essential components in the information leaflet and the consent form.MethodsWe obtained ethical approval from UK and Sri Lanka. A series of consensus (...) generation meetings on the protocol were conducted. A task oriented interview guide was developed. The interview was based on open-ended questionnaire. Then the participants were given a WHO checklist on informed consent and requested to rate the items on a three point scale ranging from extremely important to not important.ResultsTwenty-nine members from ethics committees participated. Majority of participants (23), believed a copy of the information leaflet and consent form, should accompany research proposal. Opinions about the items that should be included in the information leaflets varied. Participants identified 18 criteria as requirements in the information leaflet and 19 for the consent form.The majority, 20 (69%), believed that all research need ethical approval but identified limited human resource, time and inadequate capacity as constraints. Fifteen (52%) believed that written consent is not required for all research. Verbal consent emerged as an alternative to written consent. The majority of participants rated all components of the WHO checklist as important.ConclusionThe number of themes generated for the consent form (N = 18) is as many as for the information leaflet (N = 19) and had several overlaps. This suggests that the consent form should be itemized to reflect the contents covered in the information leaflet. The participants' opinion on components of the information leaflets and consent forms proved to be similar with WHO checklist on informed consent. (shrink)

Social learning has been shown to be an evolutionarily adaptive strategy, but it can be implemented via many different cognitive mechanisms. The adaptive advantage of social learning depends crucially on the ability of each learner to obtain relevant and accurate information from informants. The source of informants’ knowledge is a particularly important cue for evaluating advice from multiple informants; if the informants share the source of their information or have obtained their information from each other, then their (...) testimony is statistically dependent and may be less reliable than testimony from informants who do not share information. In this study, we use a Bayesian model to determine how rational learners should incorporate the effects of shared information when learning from other people, conducting three experiments that examine whether human learners behave similarly. We find that people are sensitive to a number of different patterns of dependency, supporting the use of a sophisticated strategy for social learning that goes beyond copying the majority, and broadening the situations in which social learning is likely to be an adaptive strategy. (shrink)

There is substantial evidence that in human mate choice, females directly select males based on male display of both physical and behavioral traits. In non-humans, there is additionally a growing literature on indirect mate choice, such as choice through observing and subsequently copying the mating preferences of conspecifics (mate choice copying). Given that humans are a social species with a high degree of sharing information, long-term pair bonds, and high parental care, it is likely that human females (...) could avoid substantial costs associated with directly searching for information about potential males by mate choice copying. The present study was a test of whether women perceived men to be more attractive when men were presented with a female date or consort than when they were presented alone, and whether the physical attractiveness of the female consort affected women’s copying decisions. The results suggested that women’s mate choice decision rule is to copy only if a man’s female consort is physically attractive. Further analyses implied that copying may be a conditional female mating tactic aimed at solving the problem of informational constraints on assessing male suitability for long-term sexual relationships, and that lack of mate choice experience, measured as reported lifetime number of sex partners, is also an important determinant of copying. (shrink)

The goal of the paper is to analyse some specific features of a very central concept for top-level ontologies for information systems: i.e. the concept of artefact. Specifically, we analyse the relation to be a copy of that is strongly linked to the notion of artefact and—as we will demonstrate—could be useful to distinguish artefacts from objects of other kinds. Firstly, we outline some intuitive and commonsensical reasons for the need of a clarification of the notion of artefact in (...) ontologies for information systems, and we analyse some characterisations of the notion given by two top-level ontologies (Cyc and Wordnet). Secondly, we introduce and critically analyse Tzouvaras’ notion of copy. Thirdly, we try to complete an analysis of copy by distinguishing three kinds of copies: replicas (Tzouvaras’ notion of copy), rigid copies, and functional copies. With the help of these three notions we outline a first and preliminary distinction between artefacts, objects of art and natural objects. (shrink)

This article investigates a series of additions made to JRL Gaster MS 2037, a newly identified copy of Peter of Poitier‘s Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi. Following a detailed description and dating of the manuscript, it investigates two sets of additions to the roll in depth. It establishes that the first motive behind the inclusion of such additions was educative – serving to extend the historic information given in the Compendium, while the second motive was devotional – elevating the (...) status of the Virgin Mary through the enhancement of her genealogical record. Given the fact that the manuscript was produced in the mid-fifteenth century, this focus on the Virgin likely had a polemic purpose, situating the manuscript in the context of debates over the Immaculate Conception, and using Alexander Nequams Expositio super Cantica canticorumto this end. In identifying the sources used, as well as the limits on the compiler imposed by the physical form of the roll, this examination of Gaster MS 2037 offers an insight into the later reception of this popular text. (shrink)

Electronic technologies, in general, and computer-oriented technologies specifically have had a tremendous impact on all aspects of business. One area of increased concern is the protection of intellectual properties -- notably copyrights -- within the boundaries of the broadly defined technology industry. While the ability to share copyrighted information has always existed at the most basic levels, the advent of the information age has allowed the sharing of this information to take place in potentially greater quantities and (...) without a loss of quality. As such, copying creates a major threat to industries dealing in the production and distribution of copyrightable creations. The focus of this paper is to better understand how the ethical judgments of employees regarding the opportunities to recreate copyrighted works via traditional and newer technologies impact assessments of copying behavior in the workplace. (shrink)

Background: Despite potential benefits of the return of research results to research participants, the TriCouncil Policy Statement , which reflects Canadian regulatory ethical requirements, does not require this. The policies of Canadian research ethics boards are unknown.Objectives: To examine the policies of Canadian university based REBs regarding returning results to research participants, and to ascertain if the presence/absence of a policy may be influenced by REB member composition.Design: Email survey of the coordinators of Canadian university based REBs to determine the (...) presence/absence of a policy on return of research results to research participants both during an ongoing study and at conclusion. REB coordinators were asked to return a copy of the policy or guidelines and to describe the member composition of their REB.Findings: Of 50 REBs that were contacted 34 responded and 22 met the inclusion criteria. Two had a policy that governed the return of research results while on a study, and seven following the completion of a study. Presence of an ethicist or a lawyer on the REB did not influence the presence/absence of such policies. No REBs had specific guidelines describing how participants should be informed of results.Conclusions: Most REBs did not require researchers to disclose study results to research participants either during or following a study. Thus this study identifies an ethical shortcoming in the conduct of human research in Canada. It has also demonstrated that there are no clear recommendations by REBs to facilitate the return of results to participants following research projects. (shrink)

In many countries, including patients are legally entitled to request copies of their clinical notes. However, this process remains time-consuming and burdensome, and it remains unclear how much of the medical record must be made available. Online access to notes offers a way to overcome these challenges and in around 10 countries worldwide, via secure web-based portals, many patients are now able to read at least some of the narrative reports written by clinicians (‘open notes’). However, even in countries that (...) have implemented the practice many clinicians have resisted the idea remaining doubtful of the value of opening notes, and anticipating patients will be confused or anxious by what they read. Against this scepticism, a growing body of qualitative and quantitative research reveals that patients derive multiple benefits from reading their notes. We address the contrasting perceptions of this practice innovation, and claim that the divergent views of patients and clinicians can be explained as a case of epistemic injustice. Using a range of evidence, we argue that patients are vulnerable to (oftentimes, non-intentional) epistemic injustice. Nonetheless, we conclude that the marginalisation of patients’ access to their health information exemplifies a form of epistemic exclusion, one with practical and ethical consequences including for patient safety. (shrink)

Does cultural evolution happen by a process of copying or replication? And how exactly does cultural transmission compare with that paradigmatic case of replication, the copying of DNA in living cells? Theorists of cultural evolution are divided on these issues. The most important objection to the replication model has been leveled by Dan Sperber and his colleagues. Cultural transmission, they argue, is almost always reconstructive and transformative, while strict ‘replication’ can be seen as a rare limiting case at (...) most. By means of some thought experiments and intuition pumps, I clear up some confusion about what qualifies as ‘replication’. I propose a distinction between evocation and extraction of cultural information, applying these concepts at different levels of resolution. I defend a purely abstract and information-theoretical definition of replication, while rejecting more material conceptions. In the end, even after taking Sperber’s valuable and important points on board, the notion of cultural replication remains a valid and useful one. This is fortunate, because we need it for certain explanatory projects. (shrink)

Biological evolution is often viewed narrowly as a change of morphology or allele frequency in a sequence of generations. Here I pursue an alternative informational concept of evolution, as preservation, advance, and emergence of functional information in natural agents. Functional information is a network of signs that are used by agents to preserve and regulate their functions. Functional information is preserved in evolution via complex interplay of copying and construction processes: the digital components are copied, whereas (...) interpreting subagents together with scaffolds, tools, and resources, are constructed. Some of these processes are simple and invariant, whereas others are complex and contextual. Advance of functional information includes improvement and modification of already existing functions. Although the genome information may change passively and randomly, the interpretation is active and guided by the logic of agent behavior and embryonic development. Emergence of new functions is based on the reinterpretation of already existing information, when old tools, resources, and control algorithms are adopted for novel functions. Evolution of functional information progressed from protosemiosis, where signs correspond directly to actions, to eusemiosis, where agents associate signs with objects. Language is the most advanced form of eusemiosis, where the knowledge of objects and models is communicated between agents. (shrink)

Dept. of Philosophy. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis1987 .F355. Source: Masterss International, Volume: 40-07, page: . Thesis --University of Windsor , 1987.

There is a concern that physicians/researchers are inappropriately profiting from information derived from advance copies of high-impact clinical trial data distributed by medical conferences or journals. Despite these concerns, it has never been systematically evaluated, and little is known about the degree to which it exists. This is largely due to difficulties associated with directly verifying whether or not such activities have taken place and, furthermore, many medical conferences/journals today have taken the necessary actions to guard against this. One (...) medical association in particular, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, only began responding to such concerns several years ago. Their actions during that time serve as a compelling case study, with wide-ranging ramifications, and provide the unique opportunity to delve into this phenomenon.Up until 2008, ASCO selectively and discreetly distributed abstracts from all forthcoming presentations to ASCO members two weeks prior to it becoming publicly accessible during the conference. (shrink)

Daniel Bombergs 1525 edition of the Rabbinic Bible is a typographical masterpiece. It combines the text of the Hebrew Bible with Aramaic Targumim, medieval Jewish commentaries and the Masoretic textual apparatus. As testified by the numerous copies in the libraries of Jewish and Christian readers, this was a popular edition that remained in demand long after its publication. This article examines why and how readers studied the 1525 Rabbinic Bible by analysing the annotated copy now in the John Rylands Library. (...) This particular copy furnishes detailed information about the reading habits of past owners, including early-modern Ashkenazi Jews and nineteenth-century English Hebraists. Studying how it has been used sheds light on why readers selected this edition and how they studied the apparatus and exegetical resources that Daniel Bomberg placed alongside the biblical text. (shrink)

For a conference at my college I was asked to think about how my teaching —not my research— would be affected by rapid, cheap, and simple access by computer to all the published literature of the human race. Forget what impediments stand in the way of this hypothetical future and imagine that your campus has the means for you and your students to locate, search, sort, copy, and store anything in digital form that has ever been in print. How would (...) you answer? (shrink)

A wide range of problems of the relationship between consciousness and matter are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the structure and properties of consciousness in the framework of information evolution. The role of specific (non-computational) properties of consciousness in the procedure of classical and quantum measurements is analyzed. In particular, the issue of "cloning" of consciousness (the possibility of copying its properties onto a new material carrier) is discussed in detail. We hope that the (...) generalized principle of complementarity formulated by us will open up new ways for studying the problems of consciousness within the framework of the fundamental physical picture of the world. (shrink)

Second, let me offer an apology for not having a handout for this talk. I do have a website that contains most of my talks and published papers, as well as various other ravings collected over thirty-plus years of ruminating, and you are each welcome to visit it and acquire for your own reading pleasure or other legitimate purposes (such as composing refutations of my foolish views) such copies as you may require. Just don’t steal my ideas and misrepresent them (...) as your own! The address is http://www.richard-t-hull.com. This paper should be posted there within the month. (shrink)

Plato placed great importance on the natural number one. Plato stated that the three properties of Plato’s one are indivisible, invariable, and equal and that an ideal one has no physical properties. If we regard differences among lives as differences among genes and gene products and life as the container of genes, then life has properties similar to Plato’s one. Furthermore, life has properties of multiplying when it survives and disappearing when it dies. These properties of life are prerequisites for (...) natural selection. Natural selection makes DNA become digital information, enabling accurate copies of DNA. Furthermore, DNA bases, essential for survival, become close to Plato’s one by natural selection. In addition, the information content of life must be sufficiently large for death to be irreversible, and the irreversibility of death is a prerequisite for natural selection. (shrink)

Modern Western medical individualism has had a significant impact on health care in China. This essay demonstrates the ways in which such Western-style individualism has been explicitly endorsed in China’s 2010 directive: The Basic Norms of the Documentation of the Medical Record. The Norms require that the patient himself, rather than a member of his family, sign each informed consent form. This change in clinical practice indicates a shift toward medical individualism in Chinese healthcare legislation. Such individualism, however, is incompatible (...) with the character of Chinese familism that is deeply rooted in the Chinese ethical tradition. It also contradicts family-based patterns of health care in China. Moreover, the requirement for individual informed consent is incompatible with numerous medical regulations promulgated in the past two decades. This essay argues that while Chinese medical legislation should learn from relevant Western ideas, it should not simply copy such practices by importing medical individualism into Chinese health care. Chinese healthcare policy is properly based on Chinese medical familist resources. (shrink)

We discuss the role of the notion of information in the description of physical reality. We consider theories for which dynamics is linear with respect to stochastic mixing. We point out that the no-cloning and no-deleting principles emerge in any such theory, if law of conservation of information is valid, and two copies contain more information than one copy. We then describe the quantum case from this point of view.

The paper investigates the understanding of quantum indistinguishability after quantum information in comparison with the “classical” quantum mechanics based on the separable complex Hilbert space. The two oppositions, correspondingly “distinguishability / indistinguishability” and “classical / quantum”, available implicitly in the concept of quantum indistinguishability can be interpreted as two “missing” bits of classical information, which are to be added after teleportation of quantum information to be restored the initial state unambiguously. That new understanding of quantum indistinguishability is (...) linked to the distinction of classical (Maxwell-Boltzmann) versus quantum (either Fermi-Dirac or Bose-Einstein) statistics. The latter can be generalized to classes of wave functions (“empty” qubits) and represented exhaustively in Hilbert arithmetic therefore connectible to the foundations of mathematics, more precisely, to the interrelations of propositional logic and set theory sharing the structure of Boolean algebra and two anti-isometric copies of Peano arithmetic. (shrink)

This paper is a commentary on the target article by Dana H. Ballard, “Cortical connections and parallel processing: Structure and function”, in the same issue of the journal, pp. 67–120. -/- I raise some issues about the connectionist or neural-network implementation of information and information processing. Issues include the sharing of information by different parts of a connectionist/neural network, the copying of complex information from one place to another in a network, the possibility of connection (...) weights not being synaptic weights, and the possibility of fast communication within single neurons as complex systems in their own right. (shrink)

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse incidents of personal information leakage in Japan based on Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics of information privacy and to consider how best to develop an effective personal information protection policy that conforms to Japanese situations as well as to the global requirement of personal information protection.Design/methodology/approachAfter describing recent incidents of personal information leakage in Japan, the paper examines the defects of the Act on Protection of Personal Information that (...) permit these incidents to continue. Subsequently, these incidents and the responses of the Japanese people in a manner that reflects the unique Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics of information privacy are analysed. Finally, the paper proposes a revision of APPI that conforms to these Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics as well as to the global requirement for personal information protection.FindingsPersonal information leakage cases and social responses in Japan reflect three Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics: Uchi/Soto awareness, insular collectivism and Hon'ne/Tatemae tradition. An effective law protecting personal information in Japan's cultural environment cannot be made simply by copying the privacy protection laws in western nations. Instead, legal protection of personal information should be drafted that reflects and takes into account these socio‐cultural characteristics.Originality/valueThis paper conducts analysis of incidents of personal information leakage in Japan based on Japanese socio‐cultural characteristics. A revision of APPI is proposed on the basis of the analysis. The paper's analysis and proposal would provide a good clue to develop effective measures to protect personal information and the right to information privacy in the global, multicultural information society. (shrink)

A view of evolution is presented in this paper (a two paper series), intended as a methodological infrastructure for modeling spatio-cultural systems (the design outline of such a model is presented in paper II). A motivation for the re-articulation of evolution as information dynamics is the phenomenologically discovered prerequisite of embedding a meaning-attributing apparatus in any and all models of spatio-cultural systems. An evolution is construed as the dynamics of a complex system comprised of memory devices, connected in an (...) ordered fashion (not randomly) by information-exchanges. An information-exchange transpires when the recipient system adopts a strategy (a continuum of events) that eventually changes its structure; namely, after the exchange, it contains and conveys different information. These memory devices—sub-systems—are also similarly constructed complex system. Only a part of the information is retained by a system in its physical-memory storage, which eventually loses this function too, when the ability to retrieve a common enough structure is lost. The entire amount of information is a system’s structure of connections (information exchanges); it is contained (apparently stored) dynamically when a system is observed in a temporarily stable state. This temporary permanence—robustness and resilience—is attained dynamically; namely, enabled by changes taking place in its sub-systems and in each of their sub-systems. Therefore, for modeling such a system a multi-layer/multi-scale approach is preferable. It enables the addition and subtraction of an interim scale and the consideration of such a scale as a micro or a macro (thus initiating a maneuver up or down scale) according to an ad-hoc requirement of the model, which imitates an envisaged sub system (called an ‘Inner World’), to which a certain range of decisions is relegated. This dynamics is driven (in time) by dynamically originated information growth, as defined by Shannon; i.e. by the fact that each of certain state transitions have occurred sometime in the past of the system just so and not otherwise, and by the fact that they have occurred in a certain order. Therefore, each ‘history’ and memory retrieval availability of information is unique, and thus can be used to differentiate meanings. Hence, there cannot be a comprehensive solution to the meaning attribution model-design challenge. However, the observation that at the core of each envisaged complex system, moving in time according to a rounded logic, there is an information manipulating device, operating necessarily according to a Boolean logic, can be copied into the design of a model. This observation enables, therefore, the embedding of a specific, locally fitted, meaning attributing device, which is an information manipulating mechanism (it splices/attaches one segment of information to another—its meaning). However, this is just a framework; the actual solution has still to be found locally—for each subject system. Such a solution is demonstrated for the change in location or layout in the Israeli city in paper II. (shrink)

Chapter 20 of the Philosophy of Happiness book by Martin Janello. Please see the Table of Contents for its contextual order. An audio version of this and all other sections of the book, an entire on-line review copy, and a host of other pertinent materials are available without charge at the referenced website.

The meme is an evolutionary replicator, defined as information copied from person to person by imitation. I suggest that taking memes into account may provide a better understanding of human evolution in the following way. Memes appeared in human evolution when our ancestors became capable of imitation. From this time on two replicators, memes and genes, coevolved. Successful memes changed the selective environment, favouring genes for the ability to copy them. I have called this process memetic drive. Meme-gene coevolution (...) produced a big brain that is especially good at copying certain kinds of memes. This is an example of the more general process in which a replicator and its replication machinery evolve together. The human brain has been designed not just for the benefit of human genes, but for the replication of memes. It is a selective imitation device. (shrink)

Today there are two major theoretical frameworks in biology. One is the ‘chemical paradigm’, the idea that life is an extremely complex form of chemistry. The other is the ‘information paradigm’, the view that life is not just ‘chemistry’ but ‘chemistry-plus-information’. This implies the existence of a fundamental difference between information and chemistry, a conclusion that is strongly supported by the fact that information and information-based-processes like heredity and natural selection simply do not exist in (...) the world of chemistry. Against this conclusion, the supporters of the chemical paradigm have pointed out that information processes are no different from chemical processes because they are both described by the same physical quantities. They may appear different, but this is only because they take place in extremely complex systems. According to the chemical paradigm, in other words, biological information is but a shortcut term that we use to avoid long descriptions of countless chemical reactions. It is intuitively appealing, but it does not represent a new ontological entity. It is merely a derived construct, a linguistic metaphor. The supporters of the information paradigm insist that information is a real and fundamental entity of Nature, but have not been able to prove this point. The result is that the chemical view has not been abandoned and the two paradigms are both coexisting today. Here it is shown that an alternative does exist and is a third theoretical framework that is referred to as the ‘code paradigm’. The key point is that we need to introduce in biology not only the concept of information but also that of meaning because any code is based on meaning and a genetic code does exist in every cell. The third paradigm is the view that organic information and organic meaning exist in every living system because they are the inevitable results of the processes of copying and coding that produce genes and proteins. Their true nature has eluded us for a long time because they are nominable entities, i.e., objective and reproducible observables that can be described only by naming their components in their natural order. They have also eluded us because nominable entities exist only in artifacts and biologists have not yet come to terms with the idea that life is artifact making. This is the idea that life arose from matter and yet it is fundamentally different from it because inanimate matter is made of spontaneous structures whereas life is made of manufactured objects. It will be shown, furthermore, that the existence of information and meaning in living systems is documented by the standard procedures of science. We do not have to abandon the scientific method in order to introduce meaning in biology. All we need is a science that becomes fully aware of the existence of organic codes in Nature. (shrink)

This paper addresses the status of the act of sharing a message in a social network. Scholars do not agree on what kind of act sharing is and what kind of communicative and illocutionary act is performed when a post is shared. We defend the view that sharing is an act similar to photocopying and distributing a document. Such an act is a basic act that can be used for communicative aims in certain contexts but that is not necessarily communicative. (...) One can repost for several reasons—to manifest agreement or derision, to inform, to please the author, to show activity on social networks, to have an economic return—and only some of them are communicative. However, even when reposters do not perform a communicative act, they are not relieved of every responsibility; in fact, the responsibilities of reposters are like those of the persons who copy and distribute something. (shrink)

We identify two aspects of the problem of maintaining perceptual stability despite an observer's eye movements. The first, visual direction constancy, is the (egocentric) stability of apparent positions of objects in the visual world relative to the perceiver. The second, visual position constancy, is the (exocentric) stability of positions of objects relative to each other. We analyze the constancy of visual direction despite saccadic eye movements.Three information sources have been proposed to enable the visual system to achieve stability: the (...) structure of the visual field, proprioceptive inflow, and a copy of neural efference or outflow to the extraocular muscles. None of these sources by itself provides adequate information to achieve visual direction constancy; present evidence indicates that all three are used.Our final question concerns how information processing operations result in a stable world. The three traditionally suggested means have been elimination, translation, or evaluation. All are rejected. From a review of the physiological and psychological evidence we conclude that no subtraction, compensation, or evaluation need take place. The problem for which these solutions were developed turns out to be a false one. We propose a “calibration” solution: correct spatiotopic positions are calculated anew for each fixation. Inflow, outflow, and retinal sources are used in this calculation: saccadic suppression of displacement bridges the errors between these sources and the actual extent of movement. (shrink)

Information has usually been defined as one of the properties of substance and a reflection of the substance world. A new perspective is introduced in this paper concerning the nature of information and its role in the cosmos. The five characteristics of information are discussed in the first part of this paper. While the passivity allows information to be transferred, copied, recorded, and displayed, the other four characteristics of information (i.e. initiative, independent, expressive, and holographic) (...) make it the fundamental element of the cosmos, which generates the cosmos, life, consciousness and human culture. Based on the findings of physics and astrophysics, this view is explored more by defining information as a pattern of orders throughout the cosmos, with series of parameters, functions and programs. It is argued that, the cosmos is the existence of process instead of things; the information is reality itself instead of a property of substance; and the substance is one of the forms in which information expresses itself during its evolution. An original framework named “Information Order N” (N is any integer between 0 and 7) is described in the second part of this paper. This scale of information evolution starts from initial information, which is an intrinsic pattern that inhered from maternal universes. The seven orders after that are dimension and superstring, substance and energy, life, consciousness, system of the earth (with a combination of eco-system and human culture), system of the Milky Way Galaxy, system of the cosmos. This “Information Order N” scale unifies substance,life, consciousness, human culture, and everything in the cosmos into one system of information evolution. In another word, the cosmos is information itself. (shrink)

This is a lightly copy-edited version of the paper given by Bill Ross (1964–2022) at the “Michel Serres and the Social” Colloquium held at Queens’ College, Cambridge, in June 2022. The editor has maintained the language of “paper” rather than “article” throughout. The paper addresses the respective stances of Michel Serres and Jean-François Lyotard to the prospect of the end of the world. Considering this end in relation to technology, evolution, and information throws into relief how each thinker regards (...) its significance for humankind, its connection with the Earth, and what succeeds such an end. For Lyotard, the story is ultimately one of the inhuman, a possible version of the human continued elsewhere in the universe but where the characteristics we associate with humanity are threatened – or worse – by the necessity of adapting to a different environment. By contrast, Serres is shown to regard the prospect of the end as an impetus to renew our contract with the Earth. (shrink)

These letters between Irving Copi and Anthony Blair exchanged in 1981 are of poss ible interest for the history of informal logic.

This paper is intended to complement our previous works on the necessary existence of error-correcting codes endowing genomes with the ability of being regenerated, not merely copied. It sketchily recalls some fundamental definitions and results of information theory and error-correcting codes; provides an overview of our research; shows that the disjunction of replication and regeneration enlightens the divide between germinal and somatic cells; suggests that some phenomena referred to as epigenetic may possibly find an explanation within the framework of (...) error-correcting codes; points out some difficulties, especially those related to sexual reproduction; criticizes the template-replication paradigm, and prompts geneticists to become familiar with information theory. (shrink)

In this Black Mirror Christmas special, we meet two men in a desolate cabin, who each share stories that center around two different but related technologies: The cookie technology that allows one to make digital copies of individuals and use them as personal assistants, and the Z‐Eye technology, which can be used to block people in real life. As the stories unfold, they make for a very dark Christmas tale and it becomes clear that each of these technologies raise a (...) string of ethical questions, especially related to the trade‐off between the value of privacy vs. the value of access to information. The chapter looks at these problems through different ethical frameworks, in order to explore what solutions each framework would offer to these problems. (shrink)

Current information technology policies and approaches in Colombia do not support development policies that address the structural causes of poverty. Even worse, they alienate poor people1 from technology. This condition does not allow communities to construct their own development. Instead, they pressure communities to copy and follow foreign technological models. Our experience in Colombian rural schools suggests a conceptual framework that allows people to form creative and autonomous communities and organizations, to develop their own technologies, to innovate, and to (...) promote technological movements in their socioeconomical environments. (shrink)

The amount of information conveyed by linguistic conventions depends on their precision, yet the codes that humans and other animals use to communicate are quite ambiguous: they may map several vague meanings to the same symbol. How does semantic precision evolve, and what are the constraints that limit it? We address this question using a multiplayer gaming app, where individuals communicate with one another in a scaled-up referential game. Here, the goal is for a sender to use black and (...) white symbols to communicate colors. We expected that the players’ mappings between symbols and colors would grow more specific over time, through a selection process whereby precise mappings are preferentially copied. We found that players become increasingly more precise in their use of symbols over the course of their interactions. This trend did not, however, result from selective copying of precise mappings. We explore the implications of this result for the study of lexical ambiguity, Zipf's Law of Meaning, and disagreements over semantic conventions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: How can we think about a universal ethics that could be adopted by any intelligent being, including the rising population of cyborgs, intelligent machines, intelligent algorithms or even potential extraterrestrial life? We generally give value to complex structures, to objects resulting from a long work, to systems with many elements and with many links finely adjusted. These include living beings, books, works of art or scientific theories. Intuitively, we want to keep, multiply, and share such structures, as well as (...) prevent their destruction. Such objects have value not because more information would simply mean more value. Instead, they have value because they require a long computational history, numerous interactions for their construction that we can assimilate to a computation, and they display what we call organized complexity. To propose the foundations of a universal ethics based on the intrinsic value of organized complexity, we first discuss conceptions of complexity, and argue that Charles Bennett’s logical depth is certainly a first approximation of what we are looking for. We then put forward three fundamental imperatives: to preserve, augment and recursively promote organized complexity. We show a broad range of applications with human, non-human and non-living examples. Finally, we discuss some specific issues of our framework such as the distribution of complexity, of managing copies and erasures, and how our universal ethics tackles classical ethical issues. In sum, we propose a clear, homogenous and consistent ethical foundation that can integrate many universal ethics desiderata. (shrink)

This article provides new information on the publication history of the first edition of the text that, according to many scholars, laid the ground for the growth of international law: Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis. Drawing on the preliminary findings of the Grotius Census Project at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), the following pages shed light on the first three states of the typescript, (...) the sources that Grotius had access to in France while drafting the book, and the early circulation of the 1625 edition, published by Nicolas Buon in Paris. The goal of this publication is to disseminate updated information on the printing history of this key text in the history of legal and political thought, and to invite readers to come forward with more information about the location of the remaining copies of the text, in order to advance our understanding of the rise of international law around the world. (shrink)

This article provides new information on the printing and readership history of the fifth edition of De iure belli ac pacis. Building on our earlier research on the way that the dispute between Willem Janszoon Blaeu and Johannes Janssonius influenced the publication of the 1631 edition of the text, this article studies how Blaeu harnessed his position to make the 1632 edition more reputable than the earlier version published by his rival. The article considers how, over four centuries, readers (...) have appreciated the quality of the production and three engaged with the text for radically different ends: Remigius Faesch, Baron von Boineburg, and Wendell Phillips. The article draws attention to the changes and continuities in reading and annotation patterns and offers preliminary insights into the themes that these influential readers focused on. We hope that it will inspire readers to bring further copies to our attention. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: There is relatively little research concerning the processes whereby Local Research Ethics Committees discharge their responsibilities towards society, potential participants and investigators. OBJECTIVES: To examine the criteria used by LRECs in arriving at their decisions concerning approval of research protocols through an analysis of letters sent to investigators. DESIGN: Four LRECs each provided copies of 50 letters sent to investigators after their submitted proposals had been considered by the committees. These letters were subjected to a content analysis, in which (...) specific comments and requests for additional information and changes in the protocols were recorded and compared. FINDINGS: Overall 24% of proposals were approved without request for changes or clarifications, but this varied by committee: one committee approved only 6% of proposals without change or clarification while the others ranged from 26% to 32%. The content analyses of responses indicated that they could be placed into four categories: (i) further information for the committee to aid in their deliberations; (ii) requests for changes to the design or justification for the design used; (iii) changes to the information sheets provided to potential participants; and (iv) changes to consent procedures. Of these, alterations to information sheets were the most common type of request. These four types of response could be seen as safeguarding the wellbeing of potential participants (the principle of non-maleficence), of promoting the scientific validity of the research (the principle of beneficence), and of enhancing the rights of potential participants (the principle of autonomy). CONCLUSIONS: The committees were consistent in the types of requests they made of investigators, which can be seen as attempts to protect participants' rights and ensure the scientific validity of studies. Without an analysis of the proposals sent to the committees, however, it is difficult to account for the variation in the requirements set by the committees before approval was given. (shrink)