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  • Articles  (16)
  • sociobiology  (9)
  • Computation  (7)
  • Springer  (16)
  • 2015-2019
  • 1990-1994  (16)
  • 1915-1919
  • Philosophy  (16)
  • Sociology
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  • Articles  (16)
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  • Springer  (16)
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  • 1
    Electronic Resource
    Electronic Resource
    Symbols, neurons, soap-bubbles and the neural computation underlying cognition (1994)
    Springer
    Minds and machines 4 (1994), S. 439-449 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8641
    Keywords: Computation ; dynamics ; symbolic-dynamics ; cognition ; neural-networks
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Computer Science , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract A wide range of systems appear to perform computation: what common features do they share? I consider three examples, a digital computer, a neural network and an analogue route finding system based on soap-bubbles. The common feature of these systems is that they have autonomous dynamics — their states will change over time without additional external influence. We can take advantage of these dynamics if we understand them well enough to map a problem we want to solve onto them. Programming consists of arranging the starting state of a system so that the effects of the system's dynamics on some of its variables corresponds to the effects of the equations which describe the problem to be solved on their variables. The measured dynamics of a system, and hence the computation it may be performing, depend on the variables of the system we choose to attend to. Although we cannot determine which are the appropriate variables to measure in a system whose computation basis is unknown to us I go on to discuss how grammatical classifications of computational tasks and symbolic machine reconstruction techniques may allow us to rule out some measurements of a system from contributing to computation of particular tasks. Finally I suggest that these arguments and techniques imply that symbolic descriptions of the computation underlying cognition should be stochastic and that symbols in these descriptions may not be atomic but may have contents in alternative descriptions.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00974169
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  • 2
    Electronic Resource
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    “Words lie in our way” (1994)
    Springer
    Minds and machines 4 (1994), S. 421-437 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8641
    Keywords: Computation ; computationalism ; calculus ; analog computation ; digital computation ; continuous representation ; Chinese Room argument ; symbol grounding ; continuous formal system ; simulacrum ; intentionality ; connectionism
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Computer Science , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract The central claim of computationalism is generally taken to be that the brain is a computer, and that any computer implementing the appropriate program would ipso facto have a mind. In this paper I argue for the following propositions: (1) The central claim of computationalism is not about computers, a concept too imprecise for a scientific claim of this sort, but is about physical calculi (instantiated discrete formal systems). (2) In matters of formality, interpretability, and so forth, analog computation and digital computation are not essentially different, and so arguments such as Searle's hold or not as well for one as for the other. (3) Whether or not a biological system (such as the brain) is computational is a scientific matter of fact. (4) A substantive scientific question for cognitive science is whether cognition is better modeled by discrete representations or by continuous representations. (5) Cognitive science and AI need a theoretical construct that is the continuous analog of a calculus. The discussion of these propositions will illuminate several terminology traps, in which it's all too easy to become ensnared.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00974168
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  • 3
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    On implementing a computation (1994)
    Springer
    Minds and machines 4 (1994), S. 391-402 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8641
    Keywords: Computation ; implementation ; artificial intelligence ; cognition ; Turing machines
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Computer Science , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract To clarify the notion of computation and its role in cognitive science, we need an account of implementation, the nexus between abstract computations and physical systems. I provide such an account, based on the idea that a physical system implements a computation if the causal structure of the system mirrors the formal structure of the computation. The account is developed for the class of combinatorial-state automata, but is sufficiently general to cover all other discrete computational formalisms. The implementation relation is non-vacuous, so that criticisms by Searle and others fail. This account of computation can be extended to justify the foundational role of computation in artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00974166
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  • 4
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    Why everything doesn't realize every computation (1994)
    Springer
    Minds and machines 4 (1994), S. 403-420 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8641
    Keywords: Computation ; philosophy of computation ; embeddedness ; foundations of cognitive science ; formality ; multiple realization
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Computer Science , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Some have suggested that there is no fact to the matter as to whether or not a particular physical system relaizes a particular computational description. This suggestion has been taken to imply that computational states are not “real”, and cannot, for example, provide a foundation for the cognitive sciences. In particular, Putnam has argued that every ordinary open physical system realizes every abstract finite automaton, implying that the fact that a particular computational characterization applies to a physical system does not tell oneanything about the nature of that system. Putnam's argument is scrutinized, and found inadequate because, among other things, it employs a notion of causation that is too weak. I argue that if one's view of computation involves embeddedness (inputs and outputs) and full causality, one can avoid the universal realizability results. Therefore, the fact that a particular system realizes a particular automaton is not a vacuous one, and is often explanatory. Furthermore, I claim that computation would not necessarily be an explanatorily vacuous notion even if it were universally realizable.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00974167
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  • 5
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    Computation as an intrinsic property (1994)
    Springer
    Minds and machines 4 (1994), S. 451-467 
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    ISSN: 1572-8641
    Keywords: Computation ; causal mechanism ; mind ; pattern matching ; structure fitting
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Computer Science , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract In an effort to uncover fundamental differences between computers and brains, this paper identifies computation with a particular kind of physical process, in contrast to interpreting the behaviors of physical systems as one or more abstract computations. That is, whether or not a system is computing depends on how those aspects of the system we consider to be informational physically cause change rather than on our capacity to describe its behaviors in computational terms. A physical framework based on the notion of “causal mechanism” is used to distinguish different kinds of information processing in a physically-principled way; each information processing type is associated with a particular causal mechanism. The causal mechanism associated with computation is pattern matching, which isphysically defined as the fitting of physical structures such that they cause a “simple” change. It is argued that information processing in the brain is based on a causal mechanism different than pattern matching so defined, implying that brains do not compute, at least not in the physical sense that digital computers do. This causal difference may also mean that computers cannot have mental states.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00974170
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  • 6
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    computation, among other things, is beneath us (1994)
    Springer
    Minds and machines 4 (1994), S. 469-488 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8641
    Keywords: Computation ; Turing Machines ; Computer(s) ; infinitary reasoning ; Artificial Intelligence ; Cognitive Science ; automata
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Computer Science , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract What's computation? The received answer is that computation is a computer at work, and a computer at work is that which can be modelled as a Turing machine at work. Unfortunately, as John Searle has recently argued, and as others have agreed, the received answer appears to imply that AI and Cog Sci are a royal waste of time. The argument here is alarmingly simple: AI and Cog Sci (of the “Strong” sort, anyway) are committed to the view that cognition is computation (or brains are computers); butall processes are computations (orall physical things are computers); so AI and Cog Sci are positively silly. I refute this argument herein, in part by defining the locutions ‘x is a computer’ and ‘c is a computation’ in a way that blocks Searle's argument but exploits the hard-to-deny link between What's Computation? and the theory of computation. However, I also provide, at the end of this essay, an argument which, it seems to me, implies not that AI and Cog Sci are silly, but that they're based on a form of computation that is well “beneath” human persons.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00974171
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  • 7
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    Bioaltruism reconsidered (1994)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 9 (1994), S. 75-84 
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    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Altruism ; ethics ; ethology ; evolution ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Altruistic behavior is often regarded as sociobiology's most central theoretical problem, but is it? Altruism in biology, bioaltruism, has many meanings, which can be grouped into two categories. The first I will callcommon bioaltruism. It is primarily of ethological relevance. The second,evolutionary bioaltruism, is a special category in evolutionary respects in that it may indeed pose a problem for evolutionary theory. These categories are logically independent. Moreover, both of them are logically different from altruism in its everyday psychological or moral sense. Sociobiological examples of bioaltruistic behavior concern bioaltruism in the first sense only, so the theoretical problem ‘altruism’ is supposed to pose, is indeed nothing but a theoretical problem and the bioaltruism that actually occurs has no evolutionary relevance. Nevertheless, evolutionary theory is relevant to our understanding of the possibility of common bioaltruism, and that possibility — even though bioaltruism is conceptually different from ethical altruism — is relevant for ethicists: it sheds light on what we can ask people to do or not to do.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00849915
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  • 8
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    Evolutionary naturalism and the objectivity of morality (1993)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 8 (1993), S. 47-60 
    Details
    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Ethics ; morality ; naturalism ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract We propose an objective and justifiable ethics that is contingent on the truth of evolutionary theory. We do not argue for the truth of this position, which depends on the empirical question of whether moral functions form a natural class, but for its cogency and possibility. The position we propose combines the advantages of Kantian objectivity with the explanatory and motivational advantages of moral naturalism. It avoids problems with the epistemological inaccessibility of transcendent values, while avoiding the relativism or subjectivism often associated with moral naturalism. Our position emerges out of criticisms of the contemporary sociobiological views of morality found in the writings of Richard Alexander, Michael Ruse, and Robert Richards.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00868505
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  • 9
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    An intellectual legacy of the past: The reception of sociobiology in the East-European countries (1993)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 8 (1993), S. 399-407 
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    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: German anthropology ; Lysenko ; Marx ; sociobiology ; Stalin
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Sociobiology has not been well received in Eastern Europe. Reasons for this are listed and discussed. It is suggested that times are changing and that sociobiology will have more success in the future.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00857686
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  • 10
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    Biology intersects religion and morality (1992)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 7 (1992), S. 77-88 
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    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Morality ; Arthur Peacocke ; reductionism ; Michael Ruse ; science and religion ; sociobiology ; theology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Michael Ruse's writings explore what sociobiology says about morality. Further, he claims that sociobiology undermines the base for Christian morality. After responding to criticisms of Ruse, especially those of Arthur Peacocke, I lay a base for meeting his challenge.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00130166
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  • 11
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    Evolution, altruism, and the prisoner's dilemma (1992)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 7 (1992), S. 161-175 
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    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Altruism ; evolution ; Prisoner's Dilemma ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract I first argue against Peter Singer's exciting thesis that the Prisoner's Dilemma explains why there could be an evolutionary advantage in making reciprocal exchanges that are ultimately motivated by genuine altruism over making such exchanges on the basis of enlightened long-term self-interest. I then show that an alternative to Singer's thesis — one that is also meant to corroborate the view that natural selection favors genuine altruism, recently defended by Gregory Kavka, fails as well. Finally, I show that even granting Singer's and Kavka's claim about the selective advantage of altruism proper, it is doubtful whether that type of claim can be used in a particular sort of sociobiological argument against psychological egoism.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00129881
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  • 12
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    Moral and nonmoral innate constraints (1992)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 7 (1992), S. 189-202 
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    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Epigenetic rule ; ethics ; human behavioral ecology ; innate constraint ; morality ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Charles J. Lumsden and E.O. Wilson, in their writings together and individually, have proposed that human behaviors, whether moral or nonmoral, are governed by innate constraints (which they have termed “epigenetic rules”). I propose that if a genetic component of moral behavior is to be discovered, some sorting out of specifically moral from nonmoral innate constraints will be necessary. That some specifically moral innate constraits exist is evidenced by virtuous behaviors exhibited in nonhuman mammals, whose behavior is usually granted to be importantly governed by genetic factors. Propensities for such virtuous behaviors may have been passed to humans as highly conserved mammalian genes and continue to influence us. I propose that these constitute at least a “rudimentary morality” and may account in part for the moral intuitions. But other innate constraints which are nonmoral in nature interact with the specifically moral innate constraints and with culture to yield human moral decisions and actions. Any model which aims to identify the genetic component of moral behaviors or behaviors with moral import must provide not only a delineation of cultural causes but must also distinguish between those genetic causes which may have their origin in innate moral constraints from others which are fundamentally nonmoral because the critical faculty necessary to higher level human morality itself arises in part from innate constraints of a nonmoral type; i.e., the processes of inductive reasoning common to both ethics and science. Finally, humans who could bring the nonmoral evaluative capacities to bear upon whatever moral intuitions might be genetically conserved in mammalian heritage would have an advantage over similar beings who could not.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00129883
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  • 13
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    Notationality and the information processing mind (1991)
    Springer
    Minds and machines 1 (1991), S. 129-165 
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    ISSN: 1572-8641
    Keywords: Computation ; cognition ; representation ; information processing ; physical symbol systems ; language of thought
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Computer Science , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Cognitive science uses the notion of computational information processing to explain cognitive information processing. Some philosophers have argued that anything can be described as doing computational information processing; if so, it is a vacuous notion for explanatory purposes. An attempt is made to explicate the notions of cognitive information processing and computational information processing and to specify the relationship between them. It is demonstrated that the resulting notion of computational information processing can only be realized in a restrictive class of dynamical systems called physical notational systems (after Goodman's theory of notationality), and that the systems generally appealed to by cognitive science-physical symbol systems-are indeed such systems. Furthermore, it turns out that other alternative conceptions of computational information processing, Fodor's (1975) Language of Thought and Cummins' (1989) Interpretational Semantics appeal to substantially the same restrictive class of systems. The necessary connection of computational information processing with notationality saves the enterprise from charges of vacuousness and has some interesting implications for connectionism. But, unfortunately, it distorts the subject matter and entails some troubling consequences for a cognitive science which tries to make notationality do the work of genuine mental representations.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00361034
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  • 14
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    Holism and reduction in sociobiology: Lessons from the ants and human culture (1991)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 6 (1991), S. 401-412 
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    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Ants ; behavior ; culture ; Holism ; human ; meaning ; reduction ; sociobiology ; symbol
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Most research in the natural sciences passes through repeated cycles of a analytic reduction to the next lower level of organization, then resynthesis to the original level, then new analyticareduction, and so on. A residue of unexplained phenomena at the original level appears at first to require a “holistic” description independent of the lower level, but the residue shrinks as knowledge increases. This principle is well illustrated by recent studies from the social organization of insects, several examples of which are cited here. In theory it should also apply to human social organization. Culture is biological: meaning in culture can be approached as the outcome of mechanism-based causation, because culture stems from individual cognition, which has a biological basis. It would seem to follow that the most effective way to study culture is across all levels of organization from gene to society, passing repetitively through a cycle of reduction and synthesis in the manner of the natural sciences. Reductionistic analysis is favored by the tendency of semantic memory and culture to occur in discrete units that are arranged hierarchically.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00128710
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  • 15
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    Really taking Darwin seriously: An alternative to Michael Ruse's Darwinian metaethics (1990)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 5 (1990), S. 149-173 
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    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Darwinian ethics ; ethics ; evolution ; evolutionary ethics ; M. Ruse ; naturalistic fallacy ; sociobiology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Michael Ruse has proposed in his recent book Taking Darwin Seriously and elsewhere a new Darwinian ethics distinct from traditional evolutionary ethics, one that avoids the latter's inadequate accounts of the nature of morality and its failed attempts to provide a naturalistic justification of morality. Ruse argues for a sociobiologically based account of moral sentiments, and an evolutionary based casual explanation of their function, rejecting the possibility of ultimate ethical justification. We find that Ruse's proposal distorts, overextends and weakens both Darwinism and naturalism. So we propose an alternative Darwinian metaethics that both remedies the problems in Ruse's proposal and shows how a Darwinian naturalistic account of the moral good in terms of human fitness avoids the naturalistic fallacy and can provide genuine, even if limited, justifications for substantive ethical claims. Thus, we propose to really take Darwin seriously.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00127485
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  • 16
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    Causes, proximate and ultimate (1990)
    Springer
    Biology and philosophy 5 (1990), S. 401-415 
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    ISSN: 1572-8404
    Keywords: Proximate cause ; ultimate cause ; function ; functionalism ; structuralism ; adaptation ; sociobiology ; behavioral ecology
    Source: Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
    Topics: Biology , Philosophy
    Notes: Abstract Within evolutionary biology a distinction is frequently made between proximate and ultimate causes. One apparently plausible interpretation of this dichotomy is that proximate causes concern processes occurring during the life of an organism while ultimate causes refer to those processes (particularly natural selection) that shaped its genome. But “ultimate causes” are not sought through historical investigations of an organisms lineage. Rather, explanations referring to ultimate causes typically emerge from functional analyses. But these functional analyses do not identify causes of any kind, much less ultimate ones. So-called “ultimate explanations” are not about causes in any sense resembling those of proximate explanations. The attitude, implicit in the term “ultimate cause”, that these functional analyses are somehow superordinate to those involving “proximate causes” is unfounded. “Ultimate causes” are neither ultimate nor causes.
    Type of Medium: Electronic Resource
    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF02207379
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