Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Summary. Many animals – traditionally considered “mindless” organisms – make up a series of signs and are engaged in making, manifesting or reacting to a series of signs: through this semiotic activity – which is fundamentally model-based – they are at the same time engaged in “being cognitive agents” and therefore in thinking intelligently. An important effect of this semiotic activity is a continuous process of “hypothesis generation” that can be seen at the level of both instinctual behavior, as a kind of “wired” cognition, and representation-oriented behavior, where nonlinguistic pseudothoughts drive a plastic model-based cognitive role. This activity is at the root of a variety of abductive performances, which are also analyzed in the light of the concept of affordance. Another important character of the model-based cognitive activity above is the externalization of artifacts that play the role of mediators in animal languageless reflexive thinking. The interplay between internal and external representation exhibits a new cognitive perspective on the mechanisms underlying the semiotic emergence of abductive processes in important areas of model-based thinking of mindless organisms. To illustrate this process I will take advantage of the case of a.ect attunement which exhibits an impressive case of model-based communication. A considerable part of abductive cognition occurs through an activity consisting in a kind of reification in the external environment and a subsequent re-projection and reinterpretation through new configurations of neural networks and of their chemical processes. Analysis of the central problems of abduction and hypothesis generation helps to address the problems of other related topics in modelbased reasoning, like pseudological and re.exive thinking, the role of pseudoexplanatory guesses in plastic cognition, the role of reification and beliefs, the problem of the relationship between abduction and perception, and of rationality and instincts.

Summary. Gestures are a common, integral part of communication. Here, we investigate the roles of gesture and speech in explanations, both for communicators and recipients. Communicators explained how to assemble a simple object, using either speech with gestures or gestures alone. Gestures used for explaining included pointing and exhibiting to indicate parts, action models to demonstrate assembly, and gestures used to convey narrative structure. Communicators using gestures alone learned assembly better, making fewer assembly errors than those communicating via speech with gestures. Recipients understood and learned better from gesture-only instructions than from speech-only instructions. Gestures demonstrating action were particularly crucial, suggesting that superiority of gestures to speech may reside, at least in part, in compatibility between gesture and action.

Summary. Do model-based approaches to reasoning have a stake in accounting for errors of reasoning? If mainstream logic is anything to go on, a theory of bad reasoning is wholly subsumed by a theory of good reasoning, with the former construed as the complement of the latter. In an older tradition (e.g., Mill’s System of Logic ), errors are best considered as a stand-alone component of any psychologically real approach to logic. Such is the assumption of this essay. Historically, logic’s almost exclusive preoccupation with error is to be found in what it may chance to say about fallacies. In the tradition that has come down to us since Aristotle, fallacies are errors of reasoning that are attractive, widely-distributed enough to be called “universal”, and difficult to correct, that is, possessed of signi.cant levels of incorrigibility.

Summary. We investigate, from a philosophical perspective, the relation between abductive reasoning and information in the context of biological systems. Emphasis is given to the organizational role played by abductive reasoning in practical activities of embodied embedded agency that involve meaningful information. From this perspective, meaningful information is provisionally characterized as a selforganizing process of pattern generation that constrains coherent action. We argue that this process can be considered as a part of evolutionarily developed learning abilities of organisms in order to help with their survival. We investigate the case of inorganic mechanical systems (like robots), which deal only with stable forms of habits, rather than with evolving learning abilities. Some difficulties are considered concerning the hypothesis that mechanical systems may operate with meaningful information, present in abductive reasoning. Finally, an example of hypotheses creation in the domain of medical sciences is presented in order to illustrate the complexity of abduction in practical reasoning concerning human activities.

Summary. The role of abduction in the philosophy of science has been well studied in recent years and has led to a deeper understanding of many formal and pragmatic issues [1–5]. This paper is written from the point of view that real applications are now needed to help consolidate what has been learned so far and to inspire new developments. With an emphasis on computational mechanisms, it examines the abductive machinery used for generating hypotheses in a recent Robot Scientist project [6] and shows how techniques from Abductive Logic Programming [7] offer superior reasoning capabilities needed in more advanced practical applications. Two classes of abductive proof procedures are identified and compared in a case study. Backward-chaining logic programming methods are shown to outperform theorem proving approaches based on the use of contrapositive reasoning.

Summary. My paper starts from Thomas A. Sebeok (1920-2001) and his conception of semiotics integrated with Charles Sanders Peirce’s pragmatic concept of “abduction”, disregarded by Sebeok in his own original reformulation of Peircean theory. Sebeok was not interested in logic just as he was not interested in critiquing today’s social system. Sebeok denominated his particular approach to semiotics as “global semiotics”. Taking global semiotics as our starting point, we propose to develop it in the direction of semioethics, which presupposes Sebeok’s interpretation of ancient medical semeiotics or symptomatology as an initial phase in the history of semiotics.

Summary. Semiosis may be interpreted as the capacity with which all life-forms are endowed to produce and comprehend the species-specific models of their worlds. Primary modeling is the innate capacity for simulative modeling in species-speci.c ways. The primary modeling system of the species Homo is language. Secondary and tertiary modeling systems presuppose language and consequently they are uniquely human capacities. The secondary modeling system is verbal language or speech . Tertiary modeling systems are all human cultural systems. There is a connection between language and abduction In abduction the relation between premises and conclusion is iconic and is dialogic in a substantial sense, in other words, it is characterized by high degrees of dialogism and inventiveness as well as by a high risk margin for error.

Summary. In this paper, we first construct a descriptive de.nition for emergence based on multilevel ontology, and then use Cellular Automata Modeling to simulate some classical emergent processes, such as Conway’s game of life and virtual ants building highway, which shows how the emergent phenomena arise, how the emergence of system at higher levels is derived from the simply basic interaction rules of system elements and their initial conditions at lower-levels. Although those inferences are deducible, they are not analytic. They are “bottom-up” synthetic methods based on computer simulation. There are three conditions that must be met when an emergent phenomenon can be reasoned out from its low-level elements and their interaction rules: (1) They must be simulatable, namely, that the elements and their operation rules can be constructed. (2) They must be computable, at least computable in principle. (3) They are necessary con.guration function at the high level and auxiliary hypotheses. These indicate the limitation of the method of “derived from simulation” for understanding emergence. Moreover, most of system emergent properties cannot be de.nitely predicted because of complexity, hierarchy, uncertainty and adaptability in the development of systems. That is to say, in fact, we are using a new reducible method to prove that it is insu.cient to understand emergent phenomena only with reducible method.

Summary. Direct reference theorists and Fregeans have different opinions on how to explain belief reports of sentences containing proper names. In this paper I suggest an alternative way to understand how successful de re communication is possible, based on which I give an explanation of belief ascription that seems to avoid the shortcomings of both camps.

Summary. In this paper we critically analyze the use of multiagent systems for performing simulations of biological processes. From the one hand, the possibility of associating different elements of a biological process to independent computing entities, called agents, makes multiagent systems a powerful and flexible tool for simulation. From the other hand, the weak validation of the results obtained makes multiagent-based simulations hard to trust. We discuss these issues by referring to a specific example, the simulation of a signal transduction pathway.