In the fourteenth chapter of The Philosophy of Information, Luciano Floridi puts forth a criticism of ‘digital ontology’ as a step toward the articulation of an ‘informational structural realism’. Based on the claims made in the chapter, the present paper seeks to evaluate the distinctly Kantian scope of the chapter from a rather unconventional viewpoint: while in sympathy with the author’s doubts ‘against’ digital philosophy, we follow a different route. We turn our attention to the concept of construction as used in the book with the hope of raising some additional questions that might contribute to a better understanding of what is at stake in Floridi’s experimental epistemological response to digital ontology.

Key words: reality, construction, experiment, philosophy, science, discrete/digital, continuous.

Ecological psychology is one of the most influential theories of perception in the embodied, anti-representational, and situated cognitive sciences. However, radical enactivists claim that Gibsonians tend to describe ecological information and its ‘pick up’ in ways that make ecological psychology close to representational theories of perception and cognition. Motivated by worries about the tenability of classical views of informational content and its processing, these authors claim that ecological psychology needs to be “RECtified” so as to explicitly resist representational readings. In this paper, we argue against this call for RECtification. To do so, we offer a detailed analysis of the notion of perceptual information and other related notions such as specificity and meaning, as they are presented in the specialized ecological literature. We defend that these notions, if properly understood, remain free of any representational commitment. Ecological psychology, we conclude, does not need to be RECtified. Abbreviations: EP = Ecological Psychology REC = Radical Enactivism

Key words: ecological psychology, radical enactivism, information, affordances, meaning, specificity

This essay investigates the role of constructivist beliefs of teachers for teaching practices and the learning processes of students. The data of a national video study (1PN video study) are analyzed using information on teachers’ beliefs (about the nature of science, student learning: teacher questionnaire), teaching practices (from the perspective of teachers:teacher questionnaire; independent observers: video analysis) and student learning (knowledge: test; interest: student questionnaire). Multi-level analyses include 50 German physics teachers and their 1249 students. The results show diverse findings that do not support all assumed conjectures. They demonstrate a systematic relationship between teacher beliefs about the nature of science and the nature of student learning. However, it has not been possible to show that a constructivist understanding of student learning is related to student-oriented teaching practices and a positive knowledge and interest development of the students

Research indicates that in light of what is now known about how learning occurs, much teacher instruction is wasted time since teachers are failing to take into account the pre- existing beliefs of their students. If new information does not fit with what students already know they may simply choose to reject it outright, leaving our classrooms having learnt nothing.

Functional information means an encoded network of functions in living organisms, which is represented by two components: code and an interpretation system, which together form a self-sustaining semantic closure. The interpretation system consists of inference rules that control the correspondence between the code and the function. The utility factor operates at multiple time scales: short-term selection drives evolution towards higher survival and reproduction rates within a given fitness landscape, and long-term selection favors those inference rules that support adaptability and lead to evolutionary expansion of certain lineages. Inference rules make short-term selection possible by shaping the fitness landscape and defining possible directions of evolution, but they are under the control of the long-term selection of lineages. Communication normally occurs within a set of agents with compatible interpretation systems, which I call a “communication system” (e.g., a biological species is a genetic communication system). This view of the relation between utility and inference can resolve the conflict between realism/positivism and pragmatism. Realism overemphasizes the role of inference in evolution of human knowledge because it assumes that logic is embedded in reality. Pragmatism substitutes usefulness for truth and therefore ignores the advantage of inference. The proposed concept of evolutionary pragmatism rejects the idea that logic is embedded in reality; instead, inference rules are constructed within each communication system to represent reality, and they evolve towards higher adaptability on a long time-scale. Relevance: This paper applies pragmatism and ineractivism (Bickhard) to biological evolution. It suggests that biosemiotics rests on evolutionary pragmatism.

Biosemiotics and cybernetics are closely related, yet they are separated by the boundary between life and non-life: biosemiotics is focused on living organisms, whereas cybernetics is applied mostly to non-living artificial devices. However, both classes of systems are agents that perform functions necessary for reaching their goals. I propose to shift the focus of biosemiotics from living organisms to agents in general, which all belong to a pragmasphere or functional universe. Agents should be considered in the context of their hierarchy and origin because their semiosis can be inherited or induced by higher-level agents. To preserve and disseminate their functions, agents use functional information – a set of signs that encode and control their functions. It includes stable memory signs, transient messengers, and natural signs. The origin and evolution of functional information is discussed in terms of transitions between vegetative, animal, and social levels of semiosis, defined by Kull. Vegetative semiosis differs substantially from higher levels of semiosis, because signs are recognized and interpreted via direct code-based matching and are not associated with ideal representations of objects. Thus, I consider a separate classification of signs at the vegetative level that includes proto-icons, proto-indexes, and proto-symbols. Animal and social semiosis are based on classification and modeling of objects, which represent the knowledge of agents about their body (Innenwelt) and environment (Umwelt). Relevance: The paper suggests an agency-based approach to biosemiotics. This approach is related to the interactivism of Mark Bickhard.

Open peer commentary on the article “A Critique of Barbieri’s Code Biology” by Alexander V. Kravchenko. Abstract: Biosemiotics assumes multiple levels of interpretation of signs. At the lowest level is protosemiosis, which is represented by intracellular information processes, and which can be seen as a semiotic alternative to code biology. Protosemiosis includes interpretation. However, it has fewer components in comparison to mental interpretation. In particular, protosemiosis lacks references to external objects in the sense of Peirce.

Our task is to study comparisons and contrasts between social constructionism, radical constructivism, information processing constructivism, cybernetic system s, socio-cultural developmental approaches, and social constructivism.

Reality monitoring processes are necessary for discriminating between internally generated information and information that originated in the outside world. They help us to identify our thoughts, feelings, and imaginations, and to distinguish them from events we may have experienced or have been told about by someone else. Reality monitoring errors range from confusions between real and imagined experiences, that are byproducts of normal cognition, to symptoms of mental illness such as hallucinations. Recent advances support an emerging neurocognitive characterization of reality monitoring that provides insights into its underlying operating principles and neural mechanisms, the differing ways in which impairment may occur in health and disease, and the potential for rehabilitation strategies to be devised that might help those who experience clinically significant reality monitoring disruption.

Recent “connectionist” models provide a new explanatory alternative to the digital computer as a model for brain function. Evidence from our EEG research on the olfactory bulb suggests that the brain may indeed use computational mechanisms like those found in connectionist models. In the present paper we discuss our data and develop a model to describe the neural dynamics responsible for odor recognition and discrimination. The results indicate the existence of sensory- and motor-specific information in the spatial dimension of EEG activity and call for new physiological metaphors and techniques of analysis. Special emphasis is placed in our model on chaotic neural activity. We hypothesize that chaotic behavior serves as the essential ground state for the neural perceptual apparatus, and we propose a mechanism for acquiring new forms of patterned activity corresponding to new learned odors. Finally, some of the implications of our neural model for behavioral theories are briefly discussed. Our research, in concert with the connectionist work, encourages a reevaluation of explanatory models that are based only on the digital computer metaphor.

Key words: brain theory, chaos, cognitivism, connectionism, eeg, nonlinear dynamics, olfaction, perception, sensation