In contrast to the traditional relational semiotics, biosemiotics decisively deviates towards dynamical aspects of signs at the evolutionary and developmental time scales. The analysis of sign dynamics requires constructivism to explain how new components such as subagents, sensors, effectors, and interpretation networks are produced by developing and evolving organisms. Semiotic networks that include signs, tools, and subagents are multilevel, and this feature supports the plasticity, robustness, and evolvability of organisms. The origin of life is described here as the emergence of (...) simple self-constructing semiotic networks that progressively increased the diversity of their components and relations. Primitive organisms have no capacity to classify and track objects; thus, we need to admit the existence of proto-signs that directly regulate activities of agents without being associated with objects. However, object recognition and handling became possible in eukaryotic species with the development of extensive rewritable epigenetic memory as well as sensorial and effector capacities. Semiotic networks are based on sequential and recursive construction, where each step produces components that are needed for the following steps of construction. Construction is not limited to repair and reproduction of what already exists or is unambiguously encoded, it also includes production of new components and behaviors via learning and evolution. A special case is the emergence of new levels of organization known as metasystem transition. Multilevel semiotic networks reshape the phenotype of organisms by combining a mosaic of features developed via learning and evolution of cooperating and/or conflicting subagents. (shrink)

The journal Biosemiotics was envisioned by its founding editor, Marcello Barbieri, as a major periodical for interdisciplinary papers that integrate biology and semiotics. Since 2008 the journal has published 21 issues, including special issues on crucial problems such as the semiotics of perception, origins of mind, code biology, biohermeneutics, biosemiotic analysis of information and chance. The impact factor of the journal does not fully describe the significance of this journal, because the discipline of biosemiotics is young and remains in its (...) early phase of growth. As the new editorial team of Biosemiotics, we would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Barbieri for his excellent job as an editor, and ensure the readers that we are equally committed to maintain high standards and the scientific rigor of published papers. At the end of 2014 we reorganized the editorial board of the journal based on the credential and former activity of prospective members. The cu .. (shrink)

La Base de français médiéval (BFM) fait partie des corpus de français médiéval (9e-15e s.) les plus anciens et les plus utilisés par les linguistes diachroniciens et plus largement par tous ceux qui s’intéressent à l’histoire du français. Elle est le fruit d’une collaboration entre linguistes-philologues et spécialistes de la méthode textométrique implémentée dans la plateforme TXM. L’article présente un état des lieux du corpus BFM2022 focalisé sur la représentativité et l’interopérabilité des données. Il illustre l’apport des outils numériques pour (...) l’équilibrage des données et présente la stratégie de standardisation multi-niveau (structure textuelle, références, métadonnées, annotations) ayant permis à la Base de s’intégrer à des corpus diachroniques plus étendus pour des recherches en diachronie longue. (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)

Quantum technologies can be presented to the public with or without introducing a strange trait of quantum theory responsible for their non-classical efficiency. Traditionally the message was centered on the superposition principle, while entanglement and properties such as contextuality have been gaining ground recently. A less theoretical approach is focused on simple protocols that enable technological applications. It results in a pragmatic narrative built with the help of the resource paradigm and principle-based reconstructions. I discuss the advantages and weaknesses of (...) these methods. To illustrate the importance of new metaphors beyond the Schrödinger cat, I briefly describe a non-mathematical narrative about entanglement that conveys an idea of some of its unusual properties. If quantum technologists are to succeed in building trust in their work, they ought to provoke an aesthetic perception in the public commensurable with the mathematical beauty of quantum theory experienced by the physicist. The power of the narrative method lies in its capacity to do so. (shrink)

We have revised the problem of the motion of a heavy symmetric top. When formulating equations of the Lagrange top with the diagonal inertia tensor, the potential energy has more complicated form as compared with that assumed in the literature on dynamics of a rotating body. This implies the corresponding improvements in equations of motion. Using the Liouville’s theorem, we solve the improved equations in quadratures and present the explicit expressions for the resulting elliptic integrals.

We give reasons for the importance of old narratives, including myths, in ethical thinking about science and technology. On the example of a legend about creating artificial men we explore the side effects of having too much success and the problem of intermediate social status of bioengineered artefacts.

Life has semiotic nature; and as life forms differ in their complexity, functionality, and adaptability, we assume that forms of semiosis also vary accordingly. Here we propose a criterion to distinguish between the primitive kind of semiosis, which we call “protosemiosis” from the advanced kind of semiosis, or “eusemiosis”. In protosemiosis, agents associate signs directly with actions without considering objects, whereas in eusemiosis, agents associate signs with objects and only then possibly with actions. Protosemiosis started from the origin of life, (...) and eusemiosis started when evolving agents acquired the ability to track and classify objects. Eusemiosis is qualitatively different from protosemiosis because it can not be reduced to a small number of specific signaling pathways. Proto-signs can be classified into proto-icons that signal via single specific interaction, proto-indexes that combine several functions, and proto-symbols that are processed by a universal subagent equipped with a set of heritable adapters. Prefix “proto” is used here to characterize signs at the protosemiotic level. Although objects are not recognized by protosemiotic agents, they can be reliably reconstructed by human observers. In summary, protosemiosis is a primitive kind of semiosis that supports “know-how” without “know-what”. Without studying protosemiosis, the biosemiotics theory would be incomplete. (shrink)

If the technological situation is unique, the ways to understand the contemporary moral condition are not. We link it to age-old questions: in fact, the power promised by technol-ogy only establishes a new form of human finitude. In the face of this continuity of the fundamental moral condition, we examine a number of alternative ways of thinking about the basis of responsible innovation, exploring the metaphors of quasi-parental and political responsibilities, as well as the place of virtue in innovation and (...) the role of cul-tural narratives in helping us understand the limits of responsible innovation. (shrink)

Fine-tuning arguments are a frequent find in the literature on quantum field theory. They are based on naturalness—an aesthetic criterion that was given a precise definition in the debates on the Higgs mechanism. We follow the history of such definitions and of their application at the scale of electroweak symmetry breaking. They give rise to a special interpretation of probability, which we call Gedankenfrequency. Finally, we show that the argument from naturalness has been extended to comparing different models of the (...) physics beyond the Standard Model and that naturalness in this case can at best be understood a socio-historic heuristic. (shrink)

Alexei V. Samsonovich, Int. J. Mach. Conscious., 06, 49 (2014). DOI: 10.1142/S1793843014400083.

ABSTRACT This article contributes to methodological debates in contemporary critical theory regarding the scope and features of immanent critique. I spell out the philosophical commitments presupposed by this approach to criticism and identify its basic features by comparing it with more recognizable argumentative or interpretative strategies. This comparison yields three immanent-critical requirements – for inherence, contradiction, and access – which bring into relief the heuristic and ampliative character of immanent criticism. Yet, these requirements also imply that “immanent critique” is not (...) a method in any strict sense, since they are multiply interpretable and hence generative of distinctive critical comportments. (shrink)

We deal with monotone structural deductive systems in an unspecified propositional language \ . These systems fall into several overlapping classes, forming a hierarchy. Along with well-known classes of deductive systems such as those of implicative, Fregean and equivalential systems, we consider new classes of unital and weakly implicative systems. The latter class is auxiliary, while the former is central in our discussion. Our analysis of unital systems leads to the concept of Lindenbaum–Tarski algebra which, under some natural conditions, is (...) a free algebra in a variety closely related to the deductive system in focus. (shrink)

Functional information means an encoded network of functions in living organisms from molecular signaling pathways to an organism’s behavior. It is represented by two components: code and an interpretation system, which together form a self-sustaining semantic closure. Semantic closure allows some freedom between components because small variations of the code are still interpretable. The interpretation system consists of inference rules that control the correspondence between the code and the function (phenotype) and determines the shape of the fitness landscape. The utility (...) factor operates at multiple time scales: short-term selection drives evolution towards higher survival and reproduction rate within a given fitness landscape, and long-term selection favors those fitness landscapes 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 control of the long-term selection of lineages. Communication normally occurs within a set of agents with compatible interpretation systems, which I call communication system. Functional information cannot be directly transferred between communication systems with incompatible inference rules. Each biological species is a genetic communication system that carries unique functional information together with inference rules that determine evolutionary directions and constraints. 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. (shrink)

Why do the two sexes have different lifespans and rates of aging? Two hypotheses based on asymmetric inheritance of sex chromosomes (“unguarded X”) or mitochondrial genomes (“mother's curse”) explain sex differences in lifespan as sex‐specific maladaptation leading to increased mortality in the shorter‐lived sex. While asymmetric inheritance hypotheses equate long life with high fitness, considerable empirical evidence suggests that sexes resolve the fundamental tradeoff between reproduction and survival differently resulting in sex‐specific optima for lifespan. However, selection for sex‐specific values in (...) life‐history traits is constrained by intersexual genetic correlations resulting in intra‐locus sexual conflict over optimal lifespan. The available data suggest that the evolution of sexual dimorphism only partially resolves these conflicts. Sexual conflict over optimal trait values, which has been demonstrated in model organisms and in humans, is likely to play a key role in shaping the evolution of lifespan, as well as in maintaining genetic variation for sex‐specific diseases. (shrink)

Critics attack normative ethical stakeholder theory for failing to recognize the special moral status of shareholders that justifiesthe fiduciary duties owed to them at law by managers. Stakeholder theorists reply that there is nothing morally significant about shareholders that can underwrite those fiduciary duties. I advance an argument that seeks to demonstrate both the special moral status of shareholders in a firm and the concomitant moral inadequacy of stakeholder theory. I argue that (i) if some relations morally requirefiduciary duties, and (...) (ii) the shareholder-manager relation possesses the features that make fiduciary duties morally necessary to thoserelations, then (iii) stakeholder theory is morally lacking. (shrink)

A paradigmatic shift in the foundations of quantum mechanics is recorded, from interpreting to reconstructing quantum theory. Examples of reconstruction are analyzed, and conceptual foundations of the information-theoretic reconstruction developed. A concept of intentionally incomplete reconstruction is introduced to mark the novel content of research in the foundation of quantum theory. ‡Many thanks to Lucien Hardy, Jeff Bub and Bill Demopoulos for their comments. This research was supported through the ANR grant ANR-06-BLAN-0348-01. Part of this research was held at the (...) Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Research at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is supported in part by the Government of Canada through NSERC and by the Province of Ontario through MRI. †To contact the author, please write to: CEA-Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France; e-mail: alexei[email protected]. (shrink)

What belongs to quantum theory is no more than what is needed for its derivation. Keeping to this maxim, we record a paradigmatic shift in the foundations of quantum mechanics, where the focus has recently moved from interpreting to reconstructing quantum theory. Several historic and contemporary reconstructions are analyzed, including the work of Hardy, Rovelli, and Clifton, Bub and Halvorson. We conclude by discussing the importance of a novel concept of intentionally incomplete reconstruction.

Principles of constructivism are used here to explore how organisms develop tools, subagents, scaffolds, signs, and adaptations. Here I discuss reasons why organisms have composite nature and include diverse subagents that interact in partially cooperating and partially conflicting ways. Such modularity is necessary for efficient and robust functionality, including mutual construction and adaptability at various time scales. Subagents interact via material and semiotic relations, some of which force or prescribe actions of partners. Other interactions, which I call “guiding”, do not (...) have immediate effects and do not disrupt the evolution and learning capacity of partner agents. However, they modify the extent of learning and evolutionary possibilities of partners via establishment of scaffolds and constraints. As a result, subagents construct reciprocal scaffolding for each other to rebalance their communal evolution and learning. As an example, I discuss guiding interactions between the body and mind of animals, where the pain system adjusts mind-based learning to the physical and physiological constraints of the body. Reciprocal effects of mind and behaviors on the development and evolution of the body includes the effects of Lamarck and Baldwin. (shrink)

Some mathematical theories in physics justify their explanatory superiority over earlier formalisms by the clarity of their postulates. In particular, axiomatic reconstructions drive home the importance of the composition rule and the continuity assumption as two pillars of quantum theory. Our approach sits on these pillars and combines new mathematics with a testable prediction. If the observer is defined by a limit on string complexity, information dynamics leads to an emergent continuous model in the critical regime. Restricting it to a (...) family of binary codes describing ‘bipartite systems,’ we find strong evidence of an upper bound on bipartite correlations equal to 2.82537. This is measurably different from the Tsirelson bound. The Hilbert space formalism emerges from this mathematical investigation as an effective description of a fundamental discrete theory in the critical regime. (shrink)

Introduction. The problems of state and local governance in sparsely populated and rural areas is relevant for the Russian Federation due to the presence of depressed areas, depopulation of the countryside, small towns, monotowns, migration of the rural population to large cities, regional capitals, other regions and abroad. These processes are typical for many other modern states. Solving the problems of rural and sparsely populated areas includes providing socially significant services, protecting the health and safety of residents, developing education, creating (...) and maintaining social infrastructure, and creating jobs. The purpose of the article is to identify the most important management problems in rural and sparsely populated areas and reveal possible solutions to these problems using the example of Great Britain. Methods. The research is based on a systematic approach to management in rural and sparsely populated areas. Analysis of factual data, legal sources, published survey results, foreign Internet sources. Comparative analysis of problems and measures of state policy in different states. Scientific novelty of the research. The author highlights the current measures taken in the UK at the central, local levels in order to overcome the problems of rural and sparsely populated areas. These activities as a basis for developing practical recommendations may be important for solving similar problems in Russian regions, including in the context of the COVID-19 epidemic and economic problems in the near future. Results. As a result the author identifies problems in the field of management in rural and sparsely populated and hard-to-reach areas, as well as possible directions of state policy in the UK and Russia to overcome these problems. Conclusions. The most important direction of state policy for solving the problems highlighted in the study is the development of local interests of the community, the integration of state support measures and local events. As measures aimed at solving social and infrastructural problems of sparsely populated areas in the UK, one can single out government programs implemented at the national and regional levels with the participation of industrial enterprises and businesses, a grant mechanism for the implementation of financial support, combined with the empowerment of local communities. There is no such policy in Russia yet. (shrink)

A number of recent reports and overviews on the ethical and societal problems of nanotechnology present a public that is polarized about nanotechnology. Very little responsible analysis can be found between those poles for two reasons. First, the debate about the highly controversial notion of molecular manufacturing introduced by Eric Drexler shaped much of the early discussion. Second, the polarization can be seen as a consequence of uncertainty about nanotechnology compounded by cognitive barriers. A reporter to UNESCO acknowledges that “…Assessments (...) of nanotechnology tend to radically diverge…These radically diverging assessments that have thus far dominated the debate on nanotechnology seem to be due to a lack of common ground.” The “lack of common ground” is not unprecedented in the history of technology, and scientists rightfully fear a new “GMO debacle.”. (shrink)

The Soviet authorities applied the most rigid model of state–confessional relations—segregation—to the Russian Orthodox Church. They emphasized the complete exclusion of the church from public life and its subsequent liquidation. By 1919 the Church was already publicly avoiding conflict with the Soviet authorities; its attempts at adaptation, however, were unsuccessful. By 1939, the church organization in the Soviet Union was practically eliminated, though the majority of the population still believed in God. This fact, as well as foreign-policy interests and the (...) loyalty to the state exhibited by the majority of believers during the war, led to a softening of the segregation model and to the church’s adaptation to operating within the Soviet state. (shrink)

Although the term taxon is one of the most common concepts in biology, a range of its meanings cannot be comprehended by an universal definition. Usually, biologists construe their knowledge of “the same” taxon by substantially different interpretations, so they find themselves in need either to justify this “multiplication of taxon essences”, or to surmount their plurality unifying its interpretations into a single explanation of what a taxon is. In both cases, an ontological status (“reality”) of that taxon is questioned. (...) Therefore, discrepancy between universality of the taxon concept in biology and unavoidable plurality of its interpretations can be regarded as a source of problem of the taxon ontology. The present work aims to clarify the premises of this discrepancy using phenomenological approach. Three ways of the taxon positing (as a class, as a place in the world, and as a individualized body) have been distinguished. Taxon as a class is established by common essence that is shared by a set of living beings. These living beings are regarded as speculative objects beyond an idea of the world, i.e. as objects of the experimental science. A question about ontology of taxon as a class refers to the scholastic problem of universalia; its status can be defined within the scope of the nominalism/realism opposition. Taxon as a place of common appearance of the specimens is regarded in the context of the etiological relations unifying various entities into the entire world. Taxon as a place refers to a certain position in the Natural System that is construed as an etiological map of the world. In this case a specimen of a living being is known as a curiosity, i.e. representant of its relationships as well as of the place of its origin. Ontological status of a taxon as a place is to be clarified within the framework of the natural/artificial opposition. The positing of a taxon as a collective body marked off by limits of joint survival of living beings is characteristic for biology in the strict sense which arose in the very beginning of the 19 century. A taxon as a body established by the techniques of disciplinary power sensu M. Foucault extended from the human bodies to bodies of other living beings. The ontological status of a taxon as a collective body can be defined within the scope of the wild/domesticated opposition. Therefore, the discrepancy between the universality of the taxon concept and the plurality of its interpretations is underlayed by interpenetration of three distinct modi of taxon establishing. Distinguishing between these three modi can clarify sources of ontological problems concerned with the term taxon in each case when they arise. (shrink)

The article discusses the main features of the Russian philosophy of war that developed in the first third of the 20th century. The author shows that in Russia, the philosophy of war did not develop as a separate broad line of research but limited itself to only a few meaningful, but rather brief, experiments. Nevertheless, many Russian philosophers left deep, well-founded reasoning about war, which can be reconstructed as a consistent system of views. One of its features is the shift (...) in the focus of considering armed violence from the sociological and political to the anthropological and ethical; the focus is not on war as a social phenomenon, but on the human’s position in war. In this regard, the attitude to war in Russian philosophy is paradoxical. On the one hand, war brings a lot of evil in the form of death of many people and destruction, but, on the other hand, it promotes to the manifestation of the best moral qualities in people, up to selflessness and heroism. Armed violence seems to be a tragedy of the Christian conscience, and each participant must independently find a justification for his participation in the war. Based on the conditions of a difficult moral choice, personal, existential justification may come from the idea that people cannot commit violence with a clear conscience. In this case, the person choosing to participate in a war perceives the battle as his own guilt that should be expiated. (shrink)

Numerous results about capturing complexity classes of queries by means of logical languages work for ordered structures only, and deal with non-generic, or order-dependent, queries. Recent attempts to improve the situation by characterizing wide classes of finite models where linear order is definable by certain simple means have not been very promising, as certain commonly believed conjectures were recently refuted (Dawar's Conjecture). We take on another approach that has to do with normalization of a given order (rather than with defining (...) a linear order from scratch). To this end, we show that normalizability of linear order is a strictly weaker condition than definability (say, in the least fixpoint logic), and still allows for extending Immerman-Vardi-style results to generic queries. It seems to be the weakest such condition. We then conjecture that linear order is normalizable in the least fixpoint logic for any finitely axiomatizable class of rigid structures. Truth of this conjecture, which is a strengthened version of Stolboushkin's conjecture, would have the same practical implications as Dawar's Conjecture. Finally, we suggest a series of reductions of the two conjectures to specialized classes of graphs, which we believe should simplify further work. (shrink)

The purinergic signalling system, which utilises ATP, related nucleotides and adenosine as transmitter molecules, appeared very early in evolution: release mechanisms and ATP‐degrading enzymes are operative in bacteria, and the first specific receptors are present in single cell eukaryotic protozoa and algae. Further evolution of the purinergic signalling system resulted in the development of multiple classes of purinoceptors, several pathways for release of nucleotides and adenosine, and a system of ectonucleotidases controlling extracellular levels of purinergic transmitters. The purinergic signalling system (...) is expressed in virtually all types of tissues and cells, where it mediates numerous physiological reactions and contributes to pathological responses in a variety of diseases. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the issue of Martin Heidegger’s influence on Hannah Arendt as an offshoot of the debates over the Black Notebooks and Heidegger’s attitude toward National Socialism. It c...

Are digital subjects in virtual reality morally equivalent to human subjects? We divide this problem into two questions bearing, respectively, on cognitive and emotional equivalence. Typically, cognitive equivalence does not hold due to the lack of substantialist indistinguishability, but emotional equivalence applies: digital subjects endowed with face or language elicit emotional responses on a par with real-world pleasure, desire, horror, or fear. This is sufficient for projecting moral traits on avatars in the metaverse or on dialog systems based on large (...) language models. Our main case study is a chatbot trained on the chat history between a Canadian man and his deceased fiancée. To demonstrate emotional equivalence and the mechanism of moral transfer, we compare digital devices with the functioning of oracles in a story by Plutarch and in a narrative that draws on the book of Genesis. Finally, we note that, along with the projections of ethical issues, humans also tend to bring real-world solutions of moral conundrums into extended reality. We argue that the lack of cognitive equivalence makes such projections problematic as they lead to overpolicing and a sanitized metaverse. (shrink)