This book explores the universe and its subsystems from the three lenses of evolutionary (diversifying), developmental (converging), and complex (adaptive) processes at all scales. It draws from prolific experts within the academic disciplines of complexity science, physical science, information and computer science, theoretical and evo-devo biology, cosmology, astrobiology, evolutionary theory, developmental theory, and philosophy. The chapters come from a Satellite Meeting, "Evolution, Development and Complexity" (EDC) hosted at the Conference on Complex Systems, in Cancun, 2017. The contributions will be peer-reviewed (...) and contributors from outside the conference will be invited to submit chapters to ensure full coverage of the topics. This book explores many issues within the field of EDC such as the interaction of evolutionary stochasticity and developmental determinism in biological systems and what they might teach us about these twin processes in other complex systems. This text will appeal to students and researchers within the complex systems and EDC fields.. (shrink)

This short essay reviews Robert Allinson’s edited collection, Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots. It begins with remarks on the hegemonic stance of Western philosophy in the arena of what ‘philosophy’ means. It then draws attention to the need for Chinese (and, more broadly, Asian) society to occupy a new position in global conversations, philosophical or otherwise. The review then turns to brief synopses of each of the articles that feature in the collection, returning the conversation to the broader (...) question of how to promote the dialogue for which Allinson’s volume calls. The reviewer suggests that, in addition to setting up collaborative organizations, Western philosophers should think more seriously about what and how to learn from their Eastern counterparts, and Eastern philosophers should begin writing ethical and political works which translate their pragmatic concerns into real conclusions about the values of our global culture. (shrink)

Mandevillian intelligence is a specific form of collective intelligence in which individual cognitive shortcomings, limitations and biases play a positive functional role in yielding various forms of collective cognitive success. When this idea is transposed to the epistemological domain, mandevillian intelligence emerges as the idea that individual forms of intellectual vice may, on occasion, support the epistemic performance of some form of multi-agent ensemble, such as a socio-epistemic system, a collective doxastic agent, or an epistemic group agent. As a specific (...) form of collective intelligence, mandevillian intelligence is relevant to a number of debates in social epistemology, especially those that seek to understand how group (or collective) knowledge arises from the interactions between a collection of individual epistemic agents. Beyond this, however, mandevillian intelligence raises issues that are relevant to the research agendas of both virtue epistemology and applied epistemology. From a virtue epistemological perspective, mandevillian intelligence encourages us to adopt a relativistic conception of intellectual vice/virtue, enabling us to see how individual forms of intellectual vice may (sometimes) be relevant to collective forms of intellectual virtue. In addition, mandevillian intelligence is relevant to the nascent sub-discipline of applied epistemology. In particular, mandevillian intelligence forces us see the potential epistemic value of (e.g., technological) interventions that create, maintain or promote individual forms of intellectual vice. (shrink)

Examples of extended cognition typically involve the use of technologically low-grade bio-external resources (e.g., the use of pen and paper to solve long multiplication problems). The present paper describes a putative case of extended cognizing based around a technologically advanced mixed reality device, namely, the Microsoft HoloLens. The case is evaluated from the standpoint of a mechanistic perspective. In particular, it is suggested that a combination of organismic (e.g., the human individual) and extra-organismic (e.g., the HoloLens) resources form part of (...) a common mechanism that realizes a bona fide cognitive routine. In addition to demonstrating how the theoretical resources of neo-mechanical philosophy might be used to evaluate extended cognitive systems, the present paper illustrates one of the ways in which mixed reality devices, virtual objects (i.e., holograms), and online (Internet-accessible) computational routines might be incorporated into human cognitive processes. This, it is suggested, speaks to the recent interest in mixed/virtual reality technologies across a number of disciplines. It also introduces us to issues that cross-cut disparate fields of philosophical research, such as the philosophy of science and the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

The World Wide Web (Web) provides access to a global space of information assets and computational services. It also, however, serves as a platform for social interaction (e.g., Facebook) and participatory involvement in all manner of online tasks and activities (e.g., Wikipedia). There is a sense, therefore, that the advent of the Social Web has transformed our understanding of the Web. In addition to viewing the Web as a form of information repository, we are now able to view the Web (...) in more social terms. In particular, it has become possible to see the Web as providing access to the human social environment. This is important, because issues of social embedding and social interaction have been seen to contribute to the emergence of human cognitive capabilities. The ability of the Web to provide access to the human social environment thus raises an important question: Can humanity play a productive role in the emergence of advanced forms of machine intelligence by virtue of their interactions and engagements with the online realm? The present paper attempts to show why this question is worth asking. It also attempts to highlight some of the ways in which Web-based forms of contact with the human social environment may be relevant to research into machine intelligence. (shrink)

The Internet provides access to a global space of information assets and computational services. It also, however, serves as a platform for social interaction (e.g., Facebook) and participatory involvement in all manner of online tasks and activities (e.g., Wikipedia). There is a sense, therefore, that the Internet yields an unprecedented form of access to the human social environment: it provides insight into the dynamics of human behavior (both individual and collective), and it additionally provides access to the digital products of (...) human cognitive labor (again, both individual and collective). Such access is interesting from the standpoint of research into machine intelligence, for the human social environment looks to be of crucial importance when it comes to the evolutionary and developmental origins of the human mind. In the present paper, we develop a theoretical account that sees the Internet as providing opportunities for online systems to function as socially-situated agents. The result is a vision of machine intelligence in which advanced forms of cognitive competence are seen to arise from the creation of a new kind of digital socio-ecological niche. The present paper attempts to detail this vision with respect to the notion of socially-scaffolded cognition. It also describes some of the forms of machine learning that may be required to enable online systems to press maximal cognitive benefit from their new-found informational contact with the human social world. (shrink)

An emerging consensus in cognitive science views the biological brain as a hierarchically-organized predictive processing system that relies on generative models to predict the structure of sensory information. Such a view resonates with a body of work in machine learning that has explored the problem-solving capabilities of hierarchically-organized, multi-layer (i.e., deep) neural networks, many of which acquire and deploy generative models of their training data. The present chapter explores the extent to which the ostensible convergence on a common neurocomputational architecture (...) (centred on predictive processing schemes, hierarchical organization, and generative models) might provide inroads into the problem of digital immortality. In contrast to approaches that seek to recapitulate the connectomic microstructure of the human brain, the present chapter advocates an approach that is rooted in the use of machine learning algorithms. The claim is that a future form of deep learning system could be used to acquire generative models of a given individual or (alternatively) the sensory data that is processed by the brain of a given individual during the course of their biological life. The differences between these two forms of digital immortality are explored, as are some of the options for digital resurrection. (shrink)

Thinking about thought -- Everything's an inference -- Out of context or the situation -- The rational unconscious -- The formerly dismal science -- Should you think like an economist? -- Spilt milk and free lunch -- Foiling foibles -- Coding, counting, correlation, and causality -- Odds and Ns -- Linked up -- Experiments -- Ignore the hippo -- Experiments natural and experiments proper -- Eekonomics -- Don't ask, can't tell -- Thinking, straight and curved -- Logic -- Dialecticism -- (...) Knowing the world -- Kiss and tell -- Keeping it real -- Whom to believe. (shrink)

In a world surrounded by smart objects from sensors to automated medical devices, the ubiquity of ‘smart’ seems matched only by its lack of clarity. In this article, we use our discussions with expert stakeholders working in areas of implantable medical devices such as cochlear implants, implantable cardiac defibrillators, deep brain stimulators and in vivo biosensors to interrogate the difference facets of smart in ‘implantable smart technologies’, considering also whether regulation needs to respond to the autonomy (...) that such artefacts carry within them. We discover that when smart technology is deconstructed it is a slippery and multi-layered concept. A device’s ability to sense and transmit data and automate medicine can be associated with the ‘sting’ of autonomy being disassociated from human control as well as affecting individual, group, and social environments. (shrink)

A funny, sharp and smart picture book to help mommy and daddy through difficult moments.

This study used a partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to estimate curriculum management's direct and indirect effects on university graduate programmes' viability. The study also examined the role of institutional effectiveness in mediating the nexus between the predictor and response variables. This is a correlational study with a factorial research design. The study's participants comprised 149 higher education administrators (23 Faculty Deans and 126 HODs) from two public universities in Nigeria. A structured questionnaire designed by the researchers was (...) used for data collection. The questionnaire was duly validated with an acceptable scale and item content validity indices. The dimensionality of the instrument was determined using exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Convergent validity was based on Average Variance Extracted (AVE), whereas discriminant validity was based on Fornell-Lacker criteria and the Hetero-Trait Mono-Trait (HTMT) ratio. Acceptable composite reliability estimates of internal consistency were reached for the three sub-scales. Following ethical practices, the questionnaire was physically administered to respondents and retrieved afterwards. Smart PLS (version 3.2.9) and SPSS (version 26.0) programs were used for all the statistical analyses. This study uncovered significant direct and indirect effects of curriculum management on the viability of graduate programmes. Institutional effectiveness significantly impacted graduate programmes’ viability while mediating the nexus between curriculum management and graduate programmes’ viability. Curriculum management and institutional effectiveness jointly explained a significant proportion of graduate programmes’ viability variance. The result of this study proved that graduate programmes’ viability depends, to a great extent, on how much curriculum is managed and how effective institutions are with their services. The result of this study can enable institutions seeking to run viable graduate programmes to re-evaluate their curriculum management practices and the effectiveness of their services. (shrink)

Chinese cities are increasingly using digital technologies to address urban problems and govern society. However, little is known about how this digital transition has been implemented. This study explores the introduction of digital governance in Shenzhen, one of China's most advanced smart cities. We show that, at the local level, the successful implementation of digital systems faces numerous hurdles in long-standing data management and bureaucratic practices that are at least as challenging as the technical problems. Furthermore, the study finds (...) that the digital systems in Shenzhen entail a creeping centralisation of data that potentially turns lower administrative government units into mere users of the city-level smart platforms rather than being in control of their own data resources. Smart city development and big data ambitions thereby imply shifting stakeholder relations at the local level and also pull non-governmental stakeholders, such as information technology companies and research institutions, closer to new data flows and smart governance systems. The findings add to the discussion of big data-driven smart systems and their implications for governance processes in an authoritarian context. (shrink)

In the first post World War II identity theories (e.g., Place 1956, Smart 1962), mind brain identities were held to be contingent. However, in work beginning in the late 1960's, Saul Kripke (1971, 1980) convinced the philosophical community that true identity statements involving names and natural kind terms are necessarily true and furthermore, that many such necessary identities can only be known a posteriori. Kripke also offered an explanation of the a posteriori nature of ordinary theoretical identities such as (...) that water = H2O. We identify the kinds and substances involved in theoretical identities by certain of their contingent properties. What we discover when we discover a theoretical identity is the underlying nature of the kind that we identify by those contingent properties. Now, of course, it was being a posteriori, not being contingent, that mattered to the identity theorists anyway, so the necessity of identity is not, in itself, damaging to mind brain identity theories. However, Kripke also argued persuasively that the alleged mind brain identities could not be treated in the same way as ordinary theoretical identities. We "identify" pain by feeling it, and surely how it feels is an essential property of pain, not a contingent property. Thus, a mind body identity theory must provide a different explanation of why its identities are a posteriori. A new wave of materialists has appeared on the scene with a new strategy for explaining [1] the a posteriori nature of its alleged identities. The strategy is to locate the explanation for the a posteriori nature of mind body identities, not on the side of the world, but on the side of the mind -in different ways of thinking about or imagining, or in different concepts. Thus, on this new view, there is only one property—this brain process type, which is identical with this pain.. (shrink)

With the mobility and ease of connection, wireless sensor networks have played a significant role in communication over the last few years, making them a significant data carrier across networks. Additional security, lower latency, and dependable standards and communication capability are required for future-generation systems such as millimeter-wave LANs, broadband wireless access schemes, and 5G/6G networks, among other things. Effectual congestion control is regarded as of the essential aspects of 5G/6G technology. It permits operators to run many network illustrations on (...) a single organization while maintaining higher service quality. A sophisticated decision-making system for arriving network traffic is necessary to confirm load balancing, limit network slice letdown, and supply alternative slices in slice letdown or congestion. Because of the massive amount of data being generated, artificial intelligence and machine learning play a vital role in reconfiguring and improving a 5G/6G wireless network. In this research work, a hybrid deep learning method is being applied to forecast optimal congestion improvement in the wireless sensors of 5G/6G IoT networks. This proposed model is applied to a training dataset to govern the congestion in a 5G/6G network. The proposed approach provided promising results, with 0.933 accuracy, and 0.067 miss rate. (shrink)

This volume should prove of value to the instructor who desires to stimulate ethical discussion among undergraduates. Its concern is the perennial debate between deontologists and teleologists over what is right and what is wrong in particular cases. A straightforward introduction by the editor defines the problem and summarizes the positions taken in the readings. The selections are intelligent and well-arranged. From the extremes of Kant and Sidgwick, the reader proceeds to twentieth century efforts at compromise. There is a section (...) from Ross on prima facie obligations. Rule-utilitarianism is advocated by J. Harrison and attacked by J. J. C. Smart. A provocative piece by C. Strange offers a possible answer to Smart. The final selection is R. Brandt's "Toward a Credible Form of Utilitarianism" with its attempted reduction of rule-to act-utilitarianism. A good, short bibliographic essay completes this volume.--E. S. P. (shrink)

Van der Poel’s book is a relatively comprehensive essay in ethics or, more properly, moral theology, providing outlines of a theological anthropology necessary for understanding man as a moral agent, a suggested process for determining the value of human actions, a consideration of conscience, and a discussion of virtue and vice. Van der Poel lays great stress on man’s historicity and the conditioned nature of moral laws and principles. He likewise attacks a naive dualism and proposes a view of man (...) influenced to considerable extent by contemporary existential phenomenology. The thought of Merleau-Ponty is quite strongly reflected in the anthropology proposed. Perhaps the most original section of the work is the one dealing with the evaluation of man’s moral acts. Van der Poel sharply distinguishes between the "material result" or physical activity and the agent’s intention and maintains that the "human reality" of the act is an interpenetration of these two aspects and that its moral worth is ultimately to be judged by "its impact upon the well-being of the individual and the human society." This view seems to have some kinship with utilitarian ethics, for it seems to make the final criterion of moral activity rest in its consequences. The comments of Paul Ramsey concerning the function of an "exception-making criterion" seem applicable to Van der Poel’s analysis of moral activity, and his way of describing human acts seems open to the same kind of criticism that Eric D'Arcy applied to the extreme utilitarianism of J. J. C. Smart in his Moral Acts: An Essay in their Evaluation.—W. E. M. (shrink)

Articles: Smart, "Quine's Philosophy of science"; Harman, "An Introduction to 'Translation and Meaning', Chapter Two of Word and Object"; Stenius, "Beginning with Ordinary Things"; Chomsky, "Quine's Empirical Assumptions"; Hintikka, "Behavioral Criteria of Radical Translation"; Stroud, "Conventionalism and the Indeterminacy of Translation"; Strawson, "Singular Terms and Predication"; Grice, "Vacuous Names"; Geach, "Quine's Syntactical Insights"; Davidson, "On Saying That"; Follesdal, "Quine on Modality"; Sellars, "Some Problems about Belief"; Kaplan, "Quantifying In"; Berry, "Logic with Platonism"; Jensen, "On the Consistency of a Slight (...) (?) Modification in Quine's New Foundations"; Quine, "Replies"; Publications of W. V. Quine. (shrink)

In a world surrounded by smart objects from sensors to automated medical devices, the ubiquity of ‘smart’ seems matched only by its lack of clarity. In this article, we use our discussions with expert stakeholders working in areas of implantable medical devices such as cochlear implants, implantable cardiac defibrillators, deep brain stimulators and in vivo biosensors to interrogate the difference facets of smart in ‘implantable smart technologies’, considering also whether regulation needs to respond to the autonomy (...) that such artefacts carry within them. We discover that when smart technology is deconstructed it is a slippery and multi-layered concept. A device’s ability to sense and transmit data and automate medicine can be associated with the ‘sting’ of autonomy being disassociated from human control as well as affecting individual, group, and social environments. (shrink)

The Target Article “Non-invasive prenatal testing for ‘non-medical’ traits: ensuring consistency in ethical decision making” by Bowman-Smart et al. (2023) raises the important issue that “decision-...

I invoked the notion of supervenience in my doctoral disseration, Microreduction and the Mind-Body Problem, completed at the University of Michigan in 1974 under the direction of Jaegwon Kim. I had been struck by the appeal to supervenience in Hare (1952), a classic work in twentieth century metaethics that I studied at Michigan in a course on metaethics taught by William Frankena; and I also had been struck by the brief appeal to supervenience in Davidson (1970). Kim was already, in (...) effect, construing the relation between physical and mental properties as a supervenience relation?although he was not yet using the word ?supervenience?. I assumed that a materialistic metaphysics was correct, and that integral to materialism is the idea that higher-level sciences (including psychology) are reducible to lower-level ones?ultimately to microphysics. One idea I pressed in the dissertation was that biconditional ?bridge laws? would not suffice for genuine intertheoretic reduction if these inter-level laws were additional fundamental laws of nature alongside those of the reducing science; they would be what Herbert Feigl and J.J. C. Smart, in their writings on the psychophysical identity theory, called ?nomological danglers.? I argued that the higher-level property in a bridge law should bear a relation of strict supervenience to its correlated lower-level property, rather than merely being nomically correlated with it. The basic idea was that there are no two physically possible worlds w1 and w2?where a physically possible world is, roughly, a world in which the laws of microphysics obtain and in which there are no nonphysical substances like entelechies or Cartesian souls?such that the actual-world bridge laws obtain in world w1 but not in world w2. (Thus, the bridge laws themselves are fixed relative to the fundamental physical facts and fundamental laws, rather than being fundamental laws themselves alongside those of microphysics.) Already when. (shrink)

This volume can be considered a supplement to A. Plantinga's similar book on the Ontological argument, and includes classic texts and contemporary commentary on both the Cosmological and the Teleological arguments, though there is no extended consideration of the problem of evil as it bears particularly on the Teleological argument. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume and Kant give the classic arguments for and against the Cosmological argument. Geach, Edwards, Plantinga, and Penelhum provide the contemporary commentary. Paley, Hume, Mill, and Kant state (...) and criticize the classical Teleological argument, while A. E. Taylor, Ducasse, and Broad provide the contemporary rejoinder. A concluding postscript includes articles by Smart and Taylor, with a brief selection from Tillich. It is helpful to have as much of the material as is possible on the theistic arguments under one cover. It is unfortunate, however, that editorial limitations and imagination were not stretched or reapportioned to provide some contemporary commentary from outside the orbit of Anglo-American philosophy. In addition, the editor's introduction contains some serious misstatements about the classical Cosmological arguments. The classical argument did not maintain in any sense that God is a "self-causing cause" or that the "Prime Mover is not only the initial member in a temporal series..." ; God is not "the initial member in a temporal series" at all. Nor does the editor distinguish between natural theology and the philosophy of religion; something close to obfuscation is the consequence of this failure in his remark that linguistic analysis has "demonstrated that a definition of God is the starting point for the philosophy of religion."—E. A. R. (shrink)

Frank Jackson’s defense of a Lockean representationalist theory of perception is both tightly and boldly argued. It is a first-rate analytic dissection of the relevant arguments for and objections against the representationalist position and takes up swords with D. M. Armstrong, J. J. C. Smart, G. J. Warnock, Aune, Anscombe, Price, and others, with meticulous care. It is equally forthright in accepting and defending implications of the theory which have heretofore, for one reason or another, caused the less clear (...) and more timid to quiver, if not tremble. For example, in dealing with the question whether sense-data exist in space, he writes, "I am sometimes asked why I do not follow the lead of those who locate mental objects in a special, private space. To me, this is like saying, ‘I find it mysterious that mental objects are in normal space, so I will locate them in mysterious space'". (shrink)

Introduction: All is trash that reason cannot reach : unenlightened writers and the postmodern world -- Learning to read, learning to listen in Robinson Crusoe -- The hymns of Isaac Watts and postmodern worship : aesthetic knowledge as a response to the Enlightenment critique of religion -- Jonathan Swift's information machine and the critique of technology -- Christopher Smart's poetry and the dialogue between science and theology -- Festival and discipline in revolutionary France and postmodern times -- Remembering things (...) past : tradition as a way of knowing in Edmund Burke and Hans-Georg Gadamer -- Reconciling the heart with the head : the poetry of William Cowper and the thought of Michael Polanyi. (shrink)

This book is both an introduction to the philosophy of religion and a defence of the reasonableness, though not a proof of the truth, of Christianity. The topics of miracles, freedom, God's existence, religious experience, and evil are taken up in that order, with Hume, Kant, Aquinas, Otto, and Tennant serving as points of departure for the various discussions. Smart's approach to philosophy of religion runs counter to contemporary mainstreams. He sees the traditional problems, as traditionally formulated, as genuine (...) problems. Religions make claims to truth, and the defenders of religion must show that it is reasonable to believe that such claims are true. Smart's arguments are clear and lucid, but he does not seem to fully appreciate the force of objections to traditional Christian theism.—A. E. J. (shrink)

: The dual perspective model of agency and communion predicts that observers tend to interpret a target’s behavior more in terms of communion than agency, whereas actors interpret their behavior more in terms of agency. The present research for the first time tests this model in real interactions. Previously unacquainted participants had a short conversation and afterwards rated their own behavior and their interaction partner’s behavior in terms of agency and communion. Supporting the dual perspective model, observers rated the actor’s (...) behavior higher on communion than on agency, and higher on communion than actors themselves did. Findings for actors were more complex: Actors rated their own behavior as more agentic than observers did. However, they also rated their behavior high on communion. We discuss implications for the dual perspective model as well as for understandings in social interactions. (shrink)

This review of Gigerenzer, Todd, and the ABC Research Group's Simple heuristics that make us smart focuses on the role of heuristics in discovery, invention, and hypothesis-testing and concludes with a comment on the role of heuristics in population growth.

Throughout the philosophical tradition there usually have been those philosophers who have either denied the existence of mental entities outright, or else have claimed that they were, in some sense, reducible to physical entities. And, on this score, the twentieth century has been no exception. In the last twenty or so years, the various denials of the existence of mental entities have taken three distinct forms. First, there is the sort of behaviorism advocated by Quine and Ryle. Second, there is (...) the materialism of J. J. C. Smart and D. M. Armstrong. And, third, there is the so-called Identity Theory as advocated by Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, and a host of others too numerous to mention. (shrink)

Policymakers need to start considering the impact smart connected toys (SCTs) have on children. Equipped with sensors, data processing capacities, and connectivity, SCTs targeting children increasingly penetrate pervasively personal environments. The network of SCTs forms the Internet of Toys (IoToys) and often increases children's engagement and playtime experience. Unfortunately, this young part of the population and, most of the time, their parents are often unaware of SCTs’ far-reaching capacities and limitations. The capabilities and constraints of SCTs create severe side (...) effects at the technical, individual, and societal level. These side effects are often unforeseeable and unexpected. They arise from the technology's use and the interconnected nature of the IoToys, without necessarily involving malevolence from their creators. Although existing regulations and new ethical guidelines for artificial intelligence provide remedies to address some of the side effects, policymakers did not develop these redress mechanisms having children and SCTs in mind. This article provides an analysis of the arising side effects of SCTs and contrasts them with current regulatory redress mechanisms. We thereby highlight misfits and needs for further policymaking efforts. (shrink)