Excerpt: Surely since the Enlightenment, if not before, the study of mind has centered principally on how man achieves a “true” knowledge of the world. Emphasis in this pursuit has varied, of course: empiricists have concentrated on the mind’s interplay with an external world of nature, hoping to find the key in the association of sensations and ideas, while rationalists have looked inward to the powers of mind itself for the principles of right reason. The objective, in either case, has been to discover how we achieve “reality,” that is to say, how we get a reliable fix on the world, a world that is, as it were, assumed to be immutable and, as it were, “there to be observed.”

Most of what nowadays is called evolutionary epistemology tries to explain the phylogenetic acquisition of inborn ‘knowledge’ and the evolution of the mental instruments concerned – mostly in terms of adaptation to external conditions. These conditions, however, cannot be described but in terms of what is provided by the mental instruments which are said to be brought about just by these conditions themselves. So they cannot be defined in an objective and non-circular way. This problem is approached here by what is called the external world as proposed by Campbell’s ‘natural selection epistemology’. If cognitive operators are extended by means of experimental operators the result can be expressed in classical terms if both commute (quantitative extensions). Otherwise non-classical approaches such as quantum mechanics are required (qualitative extensions). As qualitative extensions never can be excluded, it follows that there will be no definitive set of theories of everything’. From applying this concept to the inborn operators of mathematical thinking and their algorithmic extensions it follows that there will be no definitive set of axioms, i. e. it would explain Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. The ontological prerequisites being the basis of the various epistemologies discussed in the philosophy of science, are replaced by the requirement of consistency: our cognitive phenotype has to bring about a world picture within which the cognitive phenotype itself can be explained as resulting from an abiotic, then biotic, organic, cognitive and eventually scientific evolution. Any cognitive phenotype reproducing in this sense (together with its organic phenotype) represents a possible and consistent world together with its interpretation and mastery – and none of them is ontologically privileged.

Context: By proposing to regard objects as “tokens for eigenbehavior,” von Foerster’s seminal paper opposes the intuitive subject-object dualism of traditional philosophy, which considers objects to be instances of an external world Problem: We argue that this proposal has two implications, one for epistemology and one for the demarcation between the natural sciences and the humanities. Method: Our arguments are based on insights gained in computational models and from reviewing the contributions to this special issue. Results: Epistemologically, von Foerster’s proposal suggests that what is called “reality” could be seen as an ensemble of eigenforms generated by the eigenbehavior that arises in the interaction of multiple dynamics. Regarding science, the contributions to this special issue demonstrate that the concept of eigenbehavior can be applied to a variety of disciplines from the formal and natural sciences to the humanities. Its universal applicability provides a strong argument for transdisciplinarity, and its emphasis on the observer points in the direction of an observer-inclusive science. Implications: Thinking in eigenbehavior may not only have implications for tearing down the barriers between sciences and humanities (although a common methodology based on von Foerster’s transdisciplinary approach is still to crystalize), a better understanding of eigenbehaviors may also have profound effects on our understanding of ourselves. This also opens the way to innovative behavior design/modification technologies.

Key words: Eigenbehavior, eigenform, Heinz von Foerster, computational philosophy, scientific methodology, observer-inclusive science, transdisciplinarity, nondualism

A major concern is to demonstrate the contradictory nature of Maturana’s conception of ontology. A realist view of the external world is presented, assuming that the independence of the common-sense and scientific entities of the world from our schemes of representation does not render the world an ineffable, inaccessible realm of unspecifiable objects. The theory of Maturana is examined in details with regard to a possible philosophical interpretation, concluding that though Maturana describes himself as presenting a doctrine free of all ontological commitments, that self-description is false.

The essay is in the form of a dialogue between the two authors. We take John Wheeler’s idea of “It from Bit” as an essential clue and we rework the structure of the bit not to the qubit, but to a logical particle that is its own anti-particle, a logical Marjorana particle. This is our key example of the amphibian nature of mathematics and the external world. We emphasize that mathematics is a combination of calculation and concept. At the conceptual level, mathematics is structured to be independent of time and multiplicity. Mathematics in this way occurs before number and counting. From this timeless domain, mathematics and mathematicians can explore worlds of multiplicity and infinity beyond the apparent limitations of the physical world and see that among these possible worlds there are coincidences with what is observed.

My basic posture concerning Umwelt (world view) is based on the assumption that our perception and understanding of “universals” derives from the functional properties of our brains. Such universals are ultimately constructed by the functional state we know as consciousness. From such a brain-centric perspective, Umwelt is what our brain makes from the sensory inputs arising from their responses to the external world and the ancestral brain network derived from our evolutionary history. Ultimately, then, our Umwelt derives from the sensory specification of internal brain function, mostly determined genetically and epigenetically during development and honed by the leaning process.

Excerpt: Insofar as constructivism maintains nothing more than the unapproachability of the external world “in itself” and the closure of knowing – without yielding, at any rate, to the old skeptical or “solipsistic” doubt that an external world exists at all – there is nothing new to be found in it. Nonetheless, the theoretical form in which this is expressed has innovative aspects – even such radical innovations – that it is possible to gain the impression that the theory of a self-referring cognition closed in upon itself has only now acquired a viable form. One can express this more precisely: it has only now acquired a form in which it can represent itself as knowledge. A problem arises here, however. With the word “constructivism” (taken over from mathematics) premature victories have been proclaimed, and one has to accept that there will be those who step aside, with a shake of the head, denying the validity of these claims. It is important, therefore, to investigate the question of what is new and convincing here – and this will lead the discussion far afield.

Excerpt: The topic of this paper is not the philosophical problem of solipsism or scepticism about other minds, but the spectre of these problems as they haunt our everyday relations with others, in the form of the asymmetry of first- and third- person uses of psychological concepts and the doubts and uncertainties about others that afflict our ordinary adult lives. The question is whether these familiar aspects of our everyday relations with others are to be regarded as capturing the germ of truth in their more extreme or paradoxical philosophical counterparts. I want to look at the response that three different philosophers – Cavell, MerleauPonty and Wittgenstein – have made to this question. In particular, I want to use the responses of the last two as the basis of a critique of Cavell’s suggestion that the philosophical problems of scepticism about other minds and scepticism about the external world stand in a different relation to our everyday practice; that is, that there is no equivalent, in the case of other minds, of our everyday rejection of scepticism about the external world.

The Chinese Room Argument purports to show that ‘syntax is not sufficient for semantics’; an argument which led John Searle to conclude that ‘programs are not minds’ and hence that no computational device can ever exhibit true understanding. Yet, although this controversial argument has received a series of criticisms, it has withstood all attempts at decisive rebuttal so far. One of the classical responses to CRA has been based on equipping a purely computational device with a physical robot body. This response, although partially addressed in one of Searle’s original contra arguments – the ‘robot reply’ – more recently gained friction with the development of embodiment and enactivism, two novel approaches to cognitive science that have been exciting roboticists and philosophers alike. Furthermore, recent technological advances – blending biological beings with computational systems – have started to be developed which superficially suggest that mind may be instantiated in computing devices after all. This paper will argue that (a) embodiment alone does not provide any leverage for cognitive robotics wrt the CRA, when based on a weak form of embodiment and that (b) unless they take the body into account seriously, hybrid bio-computer devices will also share the fate of their disembodied or robotic predecessors in failing to escape from Searle’s Chinese room.

Key words: deep brain stimulation, functional connectivity, external world, cochlear implant, rubber hand.

An information-processing paradigm in the brain is proposed, instantiated in an artificial neural network using biologically motivated temporal encoding. The network will locate within the external world stimulus the target memory, defined by a specific pattern of micro-features. The proposed network is robust and efficient. Akin in operation to the Swarm Intelligence paradigm, Stochastic Diffusion Search, it will find the best-fit to the memory with linear time complexity. Information multiplexing enables neurons to process knowledge as “tokens” rather than “types.” The network illustrates the possible emergence of cognitive processing from low level interactions such as memory retrieval based on partial matching. Relevance: This paper outlines the implementation of a new metaphor for cognition; a metaphor grounded upon communication rather than computation.