Foundations of Science最新文献

How to understand new encounters between the living and the technological? Exemplary of such new encounters are the biotechnological creations of synthetic biology, where life and technology are increasingly intertwined in complex and intimate ways. This developing biotechnological field frames its novel entities as ‘artificial life’, ‘living technology’, and ‘biohybrid systems’. While synthetic biology too easily uses machine metaphors and technological frames for living entities, traditional philosophical frameworks also risk ontological reductionism in their efforts to understand life and technology in relation to each other. In contrast, Gilbert Simondon’s theory of individuation helps to understand the similarities between life and technology without reducing life forms to machines and without conflating technological objects with living systems. The aim of this article is twofold: first, to shed light on the relationship between life and technology, and second, to examine the emergence of new borderline cases resulting from synthetic biology, all with the help of the theory of individuation. Our hypothesis is that individuation facilitates our understanding of these new encounters between living beings and technologies, and provides conceptual clarity to prevailing dualisms such as life and technology, artificial and natural. We will develop Simondon’s theory into a framework and apply it to the case of synthetic biology, thus opening up the possibility that individuation can also help us to think about future encounters between life and technology.

Globalization and the digital revolution have forced a rethink of many philosophical works of the 20th century. Among them, Martin Heidegger’s ideas attract special attention. The main purpose of the article is to study the dichotomy of opposition between the image of technology and the pre-technological era in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of art. Research methods include the possibility of recombination of heterogeneous data to obtain previously unknown knowledge and semantic analysis of Martin Heidegger’s works. The study proposes a model of the dichotomy of civilization development within the framework of Ge-stell. The essence of this model is the concept of Ge-stell, which now covers modern civilization with industrial and digital technologies. At the same time, humanity and nature are a “permanent reserve” in relation to Ge-stell, that is, according to Heidegger’s ideas, Bestand. Humanity has two paths of development, which involve creation and destruction. Technological development over the past two centuries has caused a global environment. In his philosophy, Heidegger proposed art as the only way to overcome the crisis of modernity. The findings expand the understanding of the global problems associated with the modern development of human civilization through a new rethinking of Heidegger’s ideas. The study offers an alternative to the path of destruction through the mechanism of creative perception of technology through art.

We analyze Michael Heim’s significant concept of the metaphysics of virtual worlds and show that his concept does not meet the two basic metatheses of metaphysics understood as ontology. First, Heim defines virtual worlds as knowledge, more specifically as informational equivalents of physical things; and worlds understood in this way are not objects in the ontological sense of the term. Secondly, Heim claims that virtual worlds do not exist, and attributes to them various degrees of non-existence, and the metaphysics of non-existent in various degrees virtual objects is extremely hard to accept. We propose replacing these two essential elements in Heim’s concept with others. In result, we form a metaphysics of existent and objectivized virtual worlds, on the basis of the ideas postulated by Heim.

This study formulates the basic premises of materialism, which has largely lost its visibility despite being one of the fundamental philosophical approaches that have been effective in the development of modern scientific practice and the construction of philosophy of science, in an alternative way, and aims to develop a new materialist interpretation of it that is non-reductive, pluralistic and open to the use of more than one scientific discipline. This interpretation, expressed with the term relational materialism, first addresses matter with the concept of signifier and foregrounds the concept of beable as the general philosophical category of matter. Secondly, it formulates the category of beable within the irreducible integrity of the categories of relationality, nonstaticity, and finitude; and positions knownability in terms of its correspondence to these general onto-epistemological categories. Thirdly, it clarifies the conditions of existence and knownability of particular entities under general categories based on specially corresponding onto-epistemological categories (interactability, structurability, contextuality, transformability, scale-dependency, actuality, contingency). In this respect, this study offers a pluralistic philosophical framework within which different methodological positions and scientific disciplines can be formulated and criticized based on combinations of different particular categories under general categories. In the conclusion of this article, the meaning and potential of relational materialism for the development of scientific research programs are evaluated.

This article investigates the concept of ‘complex systems’. While not searching for some necessary and sufficient conditions that are valid for all of them, it acknowledges that complex systems can take different shapes, mainly depending on the features of their internal organization and how they interact with their environment. It then advocates a networked notion of complex systems that can accommodate their rich phenomenology and the various circumstances making them, focusing on two types of these systems: (i) one that is mainly characterized by the generation of stable patterns through self-reinforcing dynamics at the lower levels (Bénard convection) and (ii) a distinct one characterized by a more complex organization that makes them ‘minimally decomposable’ and showing autonomy (living systems). The article also assumes that the complexity of a system is analyzable by focusing on two distinct yet interrelated aspects: (i) the features of the system itself and (ii) the relationship between the system and an observer. Its final part discusses how complex systems cannot be adequately represented by a single model or description and how this is another distinctive aspect of their complexity.

Some philosophers of physics have addressed criticisms of the so-called Received View (RV) of non-individual quantum objects, also called the orthodox view. Dennis Dieks made a very good resume of these criticisms in Dieks (in: Non-reflexive logics, non-individuals, and the philosophy of quantum mechanics: essays in honor of the philosophy of Décio Krause, Synthese Library, Springer, 2023) and Bigaj (Identity and indiscernibility in quantum mechanics. New directions in the philosophy of science, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) has a more detailed account. In considering (mainly) these works and with some additional mentions, I hope to dissipate some misunderstandings about the RV and clarify what is happening with such a view. According to Dieks, the RV doesn’t fit the practice of physics since, in some situations, the physicist assumes that quantum objects can be treated individually, imitating standard objects (individuals) of classical physics. Dieks also proposes an Alternative View (AV), generally called the heterodox view, which would give a view of the fundamental ontology of quantum physics and which would be more by the way physicists usually proceed. I think that the AV cannot be viewed as the fundamental ontological theory despite being suitable for practical purposes. Furthermore, I think that it does not conflate the RV but is complementary to it, substituting it when quantum objects are sufficiently apart and can be treated in conformity with the classical way. From my point of view, in the practice of physics, one can adopt AV. Still, the RV is more adequate when we are looking for logical and foundational analyses, at least when the supposed metaphysics comprises non-individuals.

In a recent paper (Arroyo and Arenhart in Found Sci 28:885–910, 2013) Arroyo and Arenhart presented a detailed critical analysis regarding some essential aspects of representational realism and the logos approach to Quantum Mechanics (QM) addressed in terms of (i) “a diagnosis of what is wrong with currently available solutions”; (ii) “a proposal of a new methodology for addressing the problem”; and finally, (iii) “a positive proposal to answer the question, which is arrived at by following the methodology suggested.” In this work we provide a detailed reply to some deep misunderstandings that arise in this presentation due to Arroyo and Arenhart which, in turn, allows them to conclude that “contrarily to what de Ronde has suggested, his proposal is not a way to avoid commitment to uncritical images of reality, but rather, one further position in the already huge cart of options of quantum mechanics.” After providing a more accurate account of our diagnosis, we continue to address our methodology which—like that of Einstein, Heisenberg, Pauli and Schrödinger—goes back to the Greek-Modern account of physics. We then present our proposal grounded on the invariant-objective search for theoretical unity and discuss why intensive powers of action cannot be considered in dispositional or teleological terms with respect to actuality. Finally, we list some of the main results already accomplished by the logos approach and discuss the essential role of ‘intuition’ and ‘understanding’ within the realist setting.

Multi-agent scenarios, like Wigner’s friend and Frauchiger–Renner scenarios, can show contradictory results when a non-classical formalism must deal with the knowledge between agents. Such paradoxes are described with multi-modal logic as violations of the structure in classical logic. Even if knowledge is treated in a relational way with the concept of trust, contradictory results can still be found in multi-agent scenarios. Contextuality deals with global inconsistencies in empirical models defined on measurement scenarios even when there is local consistency. In the present work, we take a step further to treat the scenarios in full relational language by using knowledge operators, thus showing that trust is equivalent to the Truth Axiom in these cases. A translation of measurement scenarios into multi-agent scenarios by using the topological semantics of multi-modal logic is constructed, demonstrating that logical contextuality can be understood as the violation of soundness by supposing mutual knowledge. To address the contradictions, assuming distributed knowledge is considered, which eliminates such violations but at the cost of lambda-dependence. We conclude by translating the main examples of multi-agent scenarios to their empirical model representation, contextuality is identified as the cause of their contradictory results.

This paper explores how the epistemic emotions of curiosity, awe, and wonder can motivate us to expand our understanding. Curiosity drives us to fill a local gap in our knowledge. Awe is a mixture of fear and fascination for something so vast and mysterious that it challenges our understanding, thus inciting cognitive accommodation. Wonder is intermediate between curiosity and awe. Awe is commonly understood as a religious emotion, a reverence for the “numinous”—a transcendent reality out of bounds for ordinary humans. Awe has also been conceived as a scientific emotion, a desire to explore an infinite realm of potentiality. The latter defines “raw transcendence”, a willingness to go beyond any boundary imposed by tradition or authority. Newtonian science ignores such emotions, proposing a purely rational, reductionist picture of the world as a clockwork mechanism. However, the new scientific worldview sees the universe as evolving while producing endless novelty. The scientific investigation of this potential can benefit from practices that promote awe and wonder. These include experiencing landscapes, artistic beauty, complex patterns, and mathematical infinity. Awe and wonder thus can help us to realize the Enlightenment's promise of unbounded progress in our understanding of the universe.

In this article, which testifies the European dimension of Federigo Enriques, an essential question is raised: is it conceivable to admit a radical antithesis between logical empiricism or neo-empiricism and the Enriquesian view of scientific thought? This paper therefore analyses the relationship between Enriques’ conception of science and that of Otto Neurath, one of the main representatives of neo-empiricism. While the interest towards empiricism in Enriques’ conception of the scientific knowledge is emphasised, it cannot be denied that the relationship of Enriques’ epistemology to the scientific idea of the world appears problematic. However, elements of convergence between Neurath and Enriques are discernible above all in the neo-empiricist principle of verification, in the idea of the unity of science and in the recognition by both of the historical nature of the scientific enterprise. In particular, the comparison is emphasised between Neurath’s idea of the encyclopaedia and Enriques’ rationalism, that highlights how, on closer inspection, Neurath’s critical view is not a true antithesis of the historical perspective of science.