The book presents an interdisciplinary exploration aimed at renewing interest in Luigi Einaudi’s search for “good government”, broadly understood as “good society”. Prompted by the Einaudian quest, the essays - exploring philosophy of law, economics, politics and epistemology - develop the issue of good government in several forms, including the relationship between public and private, public governance, the question of freedom and the complexity of the human in contemporary societies.

The main goal of this paper is to investigate whether humans are unique in using tools and artifacts. Non-human animals exhibit some impressive instances of tool and artifact-use. Chimpanzees use sticks to get termites out of a mound, beavers build dams, birds make nests, spiders create webs, bowerbirds make bowers to impress potential mates, etc. There is no doubt that some animals modify and use objects in clever and sophisticated ways. But how does this relate to the way in (...) which humans make and use objects to achieve their goals? To answer this question, this paper first presents a taxonomy of artifacts, identifying four overlapping categories, namely embodied, perceptual, cognitive, and affective artifacts. It then discusses definitions of animal tool-use, arguing that we need a more liberal approach, one that goes beyond the use of tools that are embedded in occurrent perception-action cycles. This paper ends by analysing how instances of animal tool and artifact-use can be classified according to the four identified categories, concluding that some animals use embodied, perceptual, cognitive, and affective artifacts. In this sense, humans are thus not unique in the kinds of tools and artifacts we use. What is unique, however, is our unprecedented flexibility and openness to deeply incorporate a large variety of complex tools and artifacts into our embodied, perceptual, cognitive, and affective systems. (shrink)

Abstract -/- The origin of human creativity has long been a subject of inquiry spanning philosophy, neuroscience, and cultural studies. This paper argues that creativity arises from the same principles that govern complexity in nature: emergence, self-organization, and adaptive balance between order and chaos. By examining parallels between natural processes and human creativity across domains such as art, science, and cooking, this paper demonstrates that the mind’s creative capacity is not an anomaly but a continuation of the (...) universal dynamics of complexity. -/- . (shrink)

We introduce the notion of complexity, first at an intuitive level and then in relatively more concrete terms, explaining the various characteristic features of complex systems with examples. There exists a vast literature on complexity, and our exposition is intended to be an elementary introduction, meant for a broad audience. -/- Briefly, a complex system is one whose description involves a hierarchy of levels, where each level is made of a large number of components interacting among themselves. The (...) time evolution of such a system is of a complex nature, depending on the interactions among subsystems in the next level below the one under consideration and, at the same time, conditioned by the level above, where the latter sets the context for the evolution. Generally speaking, the interactions among the constituents of the various levels lead to a dynamics characterized by numerous characteristic scales, each level having its own set of scales. What is more, a level commonly exhibits ‘emergent properties’ that cannot be derived from considerations relating to its component systems taken in isolation or to those in a different contextual setting. In the dynamic evolution of some particular level, there occurs a self-organized emergence of a higher level and the process is repeated at still higher levels. -/- The interaction and self-organization of the components of a complex system follow the principle commonly expressed by saying that the ‘whole is different from the sum of the parts’. In the case of systems whose behavior can be expressed mathematically in terms of differential equations this means that the interactions are nonlinear in nature. -/- While all of the above features are not universally exhibited by complex systems, these are nevertheless indicative of a broad commonness relative to which individual systems can be described and analyzed. There exist measures of complexity which, once again, are not of universal applicability, being more heuristic than exact. The present state of knowledge and understanding of complex systems is itself an emerging one. Still, a large number of results on various systems can be related to their complex character, making complexity an immensely fertile concept in the study of natural, biological, and social phenomena. -/- All this puts a very definite limitation on the complete description of a complex system as a whole since such a system can be precisely described only contextually, relative to some particular level, where emergent properties rule out an exact description of more than one levels within a common framework. -/- We discuss the implications of these observations in the context of our conception of the so-called noumenal reality that has a mind-independent existence and is perceived by us in the form of the phenomenal reality. The latter is derived from the former by means of our perceptions and interpretations, and our efforts at sorting out and making sense of the bewildering complexity of reality takes the form of incessant processes of inference that lead to theories. Strictly speaking, theories apply to models that are constructed as idealized versions of parts of reality, within which inferences and abstractions can be carried out meaningfully, enabling us to construct the theories. -/- There exists a correspondence between the phenomenal and the noumenal realities in terms of events and their correlations, where these are experienced as the complex behavior of systems or entities of various descriptions. The infinite diversity of behavior of systems in the phenomenal world are explained within specified contexts by theories. The latter are constructs generated in our ceaseless attempts at interpreting the world, and the question arises as to whether these are reflections of `laws of nature' residing in the noumenal world. This is a fundamental concern of scientific realism, within the fold of which there exists a trend towards the assumption that theories express truths about the noumenal reality. We examine this assumption (referred to as a ‘point of view’ in the present essay) closely and indicate that an alternative point of view is also consistent within the broad framework of scientific realism. This is the view that theories are domain-specific and contextual, and that these are arrived at by independent processes of inference and abstractions in the various domains of experience. Theories in contiguous domains of experience dovetail and interpenetrate with one another, and bear the responsibility of correctly explaining our observations within these domains. -/- With accumulating experience, theories get revised and the network of our theories of the world acquires a complex structure, exhibiting a complex evolution. There exists a tendency within the fold of scientific realism of interpreting this complex evolution in rather simple terms, where one assumes (this, again, is a point of view) that theories tend more and more closely to truths about Nature and, what is more, progress towards an all-embracing ‘ultimate theory’ -- a foundational one in respect of all our inquiries into nature. We examine this point of view closely and outline the alternative view -- one broadly consistent with scientific realism -- that there is no ‘ultimate’ law of nature, that theories do not correspond to truths inherent in reality, and that successive revisions in theory do not lead monotonically to some ultimate truth. Instead, the theories generated in succession are incommensurate with each other, testifying to the fact that a theory gives us a perspective view of some part of reality, arrived at contextually. Instead of resembling a monotonically converging series successive theories are analogous to asymptotic series. -/- Before we summarize all the above considerations, we briefly address the issue of the complexity of the {\it human mind} -- one as pervasive as the complexity of Nature at large. The complexity of the mind is related to the complexity of the underlying neuronal organization in the brain, which operates within a larger biological context, its activities being modulated by other physiological systems, notably the one involving a host of chemical messengers. The mind, with no materiality of its own, is nevertheless emergent from the activity of interacting neuronal assemblies in the brain. As in the case of reality at large, there can be no ultimate theory of the mind, from which one can explain and predict the entire spectrum of human behavior, which is an infinitely rich and diverse one. (shrink)

This monograph focuses on two major themes of current interest---those of complexity and emergence. Neither of the two concepts is, in the very nature of things, precisely defined or easily comprehended. Complexity is all around us while the sciences often analyze entities and events by making simplifications. But the fault lines in the latter get exposed over larger spans of space and time. Complexity entails emergence that involves discontinuity and novelty in the evolution of complex systems, based (...) on the appearance of distinctive spatial and temporal structures. Underlying an occurrence of emergence is an instability involving the transition from one stable regime to another, where distinct space-time scales acquire relevance across the transition. The structures on the two sides of the transition are characterized by distinct sets of state variables where, on one side of the transition, collective variables make their appearance. -/- Complexity and emergence are viewed in this book in the context of the Kantian noumenal-phenomenal divide. The noumenal reality is the repository of all the complexity that there is, while the phenomenal reality emerges from the noumenal in the process of our perception, interpretation, and inference. The noumenal exists in itself as a self-determined whole, and reveals itself to us in fragmentary patches as skewed projections that we assemble to form our phenomenal world that keeps on emerging ceaselessly. Our own biological evolution and the evolution of our phenomenal world occurs in a mutually consistent process, that can be referred to as co-evolution. -/- We seek regularities in the phenomenal world by means of our scientific theories which are often successful, but that success is fragile as, over larger spans of space and time, anomalies make their appearance, giving a lie to the simplicity and regularity previously presumed to have been unearthed. Simplicity, regularity, and harmony are only fleetingly located in the phenomenal world by means of our theories as these keep on being revised endlessly and often radically, thereby generating a mosaic of theories that becomes ever more complex, indicating a pervasive complexity of the noumenal world from which the phenomenal emerges by way of strictly limited projections. The foundational metaphysics on which this book is based tells us that reality is fundamentally complex, while tiny islands of simplicity, regularity, and harmony are embedded in it in isolated space-time domains. (shrink)

The complexity approach to political economy suggests that radical uncertainty is a necessary feature of a complex and evolving socioeconomic landscape. Radical uncertainty raises various adaptive challenges that are likely to escalate in the coming decades under the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” It jeopardizes the wellbeing of ordinary citizens, whose welfare prospects, job opportunities, and income stream are rendered insecure. It also renders precarious the robust implementation of universal human rights, including the right to social security. In fact, it (...) will be argued that human rights cannot be institutionally secured unless they are implemented in a “complexity aware” way that takes account of the uncertainty of the socioeconomic order. In particular, in order to better protect the dignity of rights holders, and to allow them to survive and thrive in the face of radical uncertainty, governments ought to explore various institutional alternatives to existing schemes. It will be suggested that most existing conditional welfare policies systematically fall short of complexity-aware institutional implementation to the extent that they rely on unreasonable assumptions regarding the availability of salient technocratic control over the complex socioeconomic order. Some economists and philosophers have suggested that UBI (Universal Basic Income) might be a viable way to implement the right to social security today. I propose that some of UBI’s most ethically and economically controversial features, such as unconditionality and universality, appear relatively appealing in light of the complexity perspective. In the absence of better alternatives, UBI might even be a requirement of a robust implementation of the human right to social security – a right that welfare states are already committed to on the level of ideal theory but predictably fail to respect in practice due to policy incoherence. However, open questions remain about whether UBI can be transformed from an ideal model into a pragmatic policy. (shrink)

Main principles of the complex nonlinear thinking which are based on the notions of the modern theory of evolution and self-organization of complex systems called also synergetics are under discussion in this article. The principles are transdisciplinary, holistic, and oriented to a human being. The notions of system complexity, nonlinearity of evolution, creative chaos, space-time definiteness of structure-attractors of evolution, resonant influences, nonlinear and soft management are here of great importance. In this connection, a prominent contribution made to (...) system analysis and to a necessary reform of education and thinking by Edgar Morin is considered. (shrink)

Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been proposed as a potential way in which welfare states could be made more responsive to the ever-shifting evolutionary challenges of institutional adaptation in a dynamic environment. It has been proposed as a tool of “real freedom” (Van Parijs) and as a tool of making the welfare state more efficient. (Friedman) From the point of view of complexity theory and evolutionary economics, I argue that only a welfare state model that is “polycentrically” (Polanyi, Hayek) (...) organized as an evolving network of distributed decision-making can respond to the challenges of complexity in an adaptively efficient manner. UBI has the theoretical possibility to facilitate flexible, bottom-up innovation, since a) it embodies the “rule of law” principles of generality, nondiscrimination, simplicity, and transparency, and b) it grants people widespread freedom to experiment, innovate, and deviate from established practices and norms; but whether it can be made to work as intended depends on a number of variables in its design. I situate my research in the contemporary UBI debate around automation and technological development, which I interpret creatively through the lens of contemporary evolutionary political economy. I advance a syncretic model of institutional design based upon the shared insights of the Santa Fe, Neo-Hayekian, and Neo-Schumpeterian schools of evolutionary economics that, following Adam Thierer and Michael Munger, I call the framework of Permissionless Innovation (PI). Under the PI framework, which is a development of the tradition of evolutionary liberalism (Hume, Smith, Mandeville, Mill, Hayek, Polanyi, Schumpeter, Hodgson), individuals are granted the default right to innovate without having to ask for permission, and the right to basic income, which they can use to support their right to innovate, mutate, and experiment. This framework is a liberal framework to the extent it relies on widespread human freedom as a means of fostering innovation and social learning. And it is an evolutionary framework to the extent that it seeks to facilitate evolutionary socioeconomic processes for the sake of social progress and welfare advancement. I proceed to show, through an analysis of how innovation operates in both the economy and the cultural domain, that UBI can be used as an important cornerstone of an evolutionary liberal model of “ecostructural” governance that treats the socioeconomic order as an ecological garden of spontaneous growths, adaptations, and innovations. I call this the Permissionless Innovation Universal Basic Income (PIUBI) framework. In it, the right to innovate, deviate, and mutate is upheld as the “gold standard” of institutional design whereby individuals are granted widespread freedoms combined with the provision of UBI and other innovation-fostering (carefully bound) services and regulations. In the coming decades, UBI may even enable poor people to take better advantage of Human Enhancement Technologies (HETs) and other experimental innovations. Such a framework is compatible with a fast pace of evolutionary development, but the regulatory model accompanying such a framework must be capable of responding to evolutionary lock-ins, maladaptive innovations, self-destructive behaviour on the part of UBI recipients, and the management of catastrophic and existential risks. In the end, I will have shown that the PIUBI framework can be justified as a plausible default institutional mechanism for responding to radical uncertainty, but it needs to be experimentally adapted to changing circumstances with the help of various situation-specific, polycentric, multi-level, approaches. (shrink)

Navigating Complexity explores the defining questions of our time, how human beings make sense of themselves and their choices in a world that never stands still. The book introduces the SPARC framework, short for the Spectrum of Possibility and Recursive Choice, a model that connects philosophy, cognitive science, and systems theory to rethink how we understand behavior, autonomy, and identity. At its heart, SPARC offers a view of the mind as an adaptive process rather than a fixed thing. (...) Through the interplay of possibility and recursion, it shows how beliefs, emotions, and habits take shape within patterns of feedback and social exchange. Choice, in this view, is not a single act but an evolving negotiation between what we imagine and what the world allows. -/- Drawing from neuroscience, the philosophy of mind, and cybernetic principles, Navigating Complexity moves beyond theory into practice. It offers ways to recognize the forces that influence our thinking, to reduce noise and fragmentation, and to cultivate coherence amid uncertainty. By tracing how feedback, emotion, and context shape decision-making, the book reveals a deeper truth about adaptation. To navigate change is not simply to survive it, but to participate in shaping what comes next. (shrink)

The “language-communication-society” triangle defies traditional scientific approaches. Rather, it is a phenomenon that calls for an integration of complex, transdisciplinary perspectives, if we are to make any progress in understanding how it works. The highly diverse agents in play are not merely cognitive and/or cultural, but also emotional and behavioural in their specificity. Indeed, the effort may require building a theoretical and methodological body of knowledge that can effectively convey the characteristic properties of phenomena in human terms. New (...) class='Hi'>complexity approaches allow us to rethink our limited and mechanistic images of human societies and create more appropriate emo-cognitive dynamic and holistic models. We have to enter into dialogue with the complexity views coming out of other more ‘material’ sciences, but we also need to take steps in the linguistic and psycho-sociological fields towards creating perspectives and concepts better fitted to human characteristics. Our understanding of complexity is different – but not opposed – to the one that is more commonly found in texts written by people working in physics or computer science, for example. The goal of this book is to extend the knowledge of these other more ‘human’ or socially oriented perspectives on complexity, taking account of the language and communication singularities of human agents in society. (shrink)

Throughout most of the 20th century, analytical and reductionist approaches have dominated in biological, social, and humanistic sciences, including linguistics and communication. We generally believed we could account for fundamental phenomena in invoking basic elemental units. Although the amount of knowledge generated was certainly impressive, we have also seen limitations of this approach. Discovering the sound formants of human languages, for example, has allowed us to know vital aspects of the ‘material’ plane of verbal codes, but it tells us (...) little about significant aspects of their social functions. I firmly believe, therefore, that alongside a linguistics that looks ‘inward’ there should also be a linguistics that looks ‘outward’, or one even that is constructed ‘from the outside’, a linguistics that I refer to elsewhere as ‘holistic’ though it could be identified by a different name. My current vision is to promote simultaneously the perspective that goes from the part to the whole and that which goes from the whole to the parts, i.e., both from the top down and from the bottom up. This goal is shared with other disciplines which recognize that many phenomena related to life are interwoven, self-organising, emergent and processual. Thus, we need to re-examine how we have conceived of reality, both the way we have looked at it and the images we have used to talk about it. Several approaches now grouped under the label of complexity have been elaborated towards this objective of finding new concepts and ways of thinking that better fit the complex organisation of facts and events. (shrink)

Expert video game players exhibit unique behaviors compared to their less experienced counterparts. Such behaviours may also influence physiological aspects such as blinks and eyelid movements. In this study, we used the Eye Aspect Ratio (EAR) signal from a webcam to investigate the complex dynamics of eyelid movements among players with different levels of expertise in Tetris. We measured complex dynamics using recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) based measures (Determinism, Laminarity, Average Diagonal Line, and Trapping Time). Our results show that expert (...) Tetris players display more complex patterns in their eyelid behaviour, but also that some of the measures obtained using RQA correlate directly with player actions (keys pressed) and events in Tetris (numbers of lines cleared). This study provides the first example of a direct connection between RQA measures extracted from the EAR signal and behavior displayed in a game. Our results also demonstrate the potential of using RQA measures extracted from the EAR in analysing human behavior during other screen-presented tasks. (shrink)

In computational complexity theory, decision problems are divided into complexity classes based on the amount of computational resources it takes for algorithms to solve them. In theoretical computer science, it is commonly accepted that only functions for solving problems in the complexity class P, solvable by a deterministic Turing machine in polynomial time, are considered to be tractable. In cognitive science and philosophy, this tractability result has been used to argue that only functions in P can feasibly (...) work as computational models of human cognitive capacities. One interesting area of computational complexity theory is descriptive complexity, which connects the expressive strength of systems of logic with the computational complexity classes. In descriptive complexity theory, it is established that only first-order (classical) systems are connected to P, or one of its subclasses. Consequently, second-order systems of logic are considered to be computationally intractable, and may therefore seem to be unfit to model human cognitive capacities. This would be problematic when we think of the role of logic as the foundations of mathematics. In order to express many important mathematical concepts and systematically prove theorems involving them, we need to have a system of logic stronger than classical first-order logic. But if such a system is considered to be intractable, it means that the logical foundation of mathematics can be prohibitively complex for human cognition. In this paper I will argue, however, that this problem is the result of an unjustified direct use of computational complexity classes in cognitive modelling. Placing my account in the recent literature on the topic, I argue that the problem can be solved by considering computational complexity for humanly relevant problem solving algorithms and input sizes. (shrink)

Consciousness has been the bone of contention for philosophers throughout centuries. Indian philosophy largely adopted lived experience as the starting point for its explorations of consciousness. For this reason, from the very beginning, experience was an integral way of grasping consciousness, whose validity as a tool was considered self-evident. Thus, in Indian philosophy, the question was not to move from the brain to mind but to understand experience of an individual and how such an experience is determined through mental structures (...) (and secondarily, the preoccupation with the brain and its relation to the mind). In contrast, cognitive science (the study of mind and cognition through 1 interdisciplinary methods, with emphasis on computational methods) found its debates soaked in discussion which primarily involved the brain and mind. Experience was not considered a primary source of information and its validity had to be established to consider it a source of information of mind. With the rise of physicalism and realization that mental states are correlative to brain states, the body was virtually neglected from involvement in understanding the mind and the attempts to reduce mind to the brain were rampant. The inability to explain subjective experience of an individual through neuroscientific findings alone has urged philosophers to explore other ways of understanding the ontology of mind. Over the last few years, embodied cognition and enactive approach have brought back the body as a central participant in this debate, providing fertile grounds to explain the relation of brain, body and mind. This paper proposes that we understand the brain as a complex system from which the mind emerges. This emergence is marked by the development of novel property of self-consciousness in human beings. The mind is a process which is embedded throughout the body and thus, the body acts as an actualizing medium for the individual. Thus, the brain is a necessary condition for the mind to be while the mind is embedded throughout the body. The brain and mind are in reciprocal causal relationship with one another, as is the body and environment with one another. In this paper, embodied cognition is understood through principles of Merleau Ponty's idea of embodiment, than through Andy Clark and Francis Varela's alone. (shrink)

Unified and causal complex-dynamic origin of standard (special and general) relativistic and quantum effects revealed previously at the lowest levels of world interaction dynamics is explicitly generalised to all higher levels of unreduced interaction processes, thus additionally confirming the causally complete character of complex-dynamical, naturally quantised relativity, which does not contain any artificially added, abstract postulates. We demonstrate some elementary applications of this generalised quantum relativity at higher levels of complex brain and social interaction dynamics.

The Hoffmann reflex (H-wave) is produced by alpha-motoneuron activation in the spinal cord. A feature of this electromyography response is that it exhibits fluctuations in amplitude even during repetitive stimulation with the same intensity of current. We herein explore the hypothesis that physical training induces plastic changes in the motor system. Such changes are evaluated with the fractal dimension (FD) analysis of the H-wave amplitude-fluctuations (H-wave FD) and the cross-covariance (CCV) between the bilateral H-wave amplitudes. The aim of this study (...) was to compare the H-wave FD as well as the CCV before and after track training in sedentary individuals and athletes. The training modality in all subjects consisted of running three times per week (for 13 weeks) in a concrete road of 5 km. Given the different physical condition of sedentary vs. athletes, the running time between sedentary and athletes was different. After training, the FD was significantly increased in sedentary individuals but significantly reduced in athletes, although there were no changes in spinal excitability in either group of subjects. Moreover, the CCV between bilateral H-waves exhibited a significant increase in athletes but not in sedentary individuals. These differential changes in the FD and CCV indicate that the plastic changes in the complexity of the H-wave amplitude fluctuations as well as the synaptic inputs to the Ia-motoneuron systems of both legs were correlated to the previous fitness history of the subjects. Furthermore, these findings demonstrate that the FD and CCV can be employed as indexes to study plastic changes in the human motor system. (shrink)

This study asks a simple but profound question: How does the mind solve problems without drowning in complexity? Drawing on computational theory, neuroscience, and philosophy, we argue that cognition is built around three tractable primitives: collapsing high‑dimensional uncertainty (MAP), passing messages locally (SUM), and modulating probes according to cost (Control). -/- We first construct synthetic families of tasks to show how these primitives behave in principle, then design experiments with EEG to test whether the same signatures appear in (...) class='Hi'>human brains. The results suggest that cognition is not a brute‑force machine but a system tuned to efficiency: frontal signals collapse variance, parietal networks synchronize like message‑passing graphs, and somatosensory responses scale with cost. -/- Philosophically, the work stresses that information is not abstract but physical, behaving like energy—conserved, transformed, and optimized. Cognition, on this view, is the physics of information, a lawful system designed to navigate complexity without succumbing to intractability. -/- The broader implication is a unified science of tractability: bridging computation, neuroscience, and philosophy to show that the limits of thought are principled, measurable, and adaptive. This framework not only clarifies how minds work but also sets an agenda for understanding intelligence as a natural law of efficiency. (shrink)

There is an unacknowledged disagreement on what kind of dialogue best supports democracy. Many view democracy as analogous to a law court and so view “democratic dialogue” as a contest between competing advocates who have acquired the kind of “steel trap” critical thinking skills that are ideal for winning in the external marketplace of ideas. Others assume that the propensity to seriously reflect on opposing viewpoints within the minds of individuals is ideal for democratic maintenance. It will be argued here (...) that our love affair with “critical thinking” that tends to support an external battle of ideas harms democracy. It will be argued that the complexity of our common humanity, the complexity of our form of governance, the complexity of the approaches needed to face wicked problems, and the complexity of the internal engine of personal development requires that we learn to readily engage in open truth-seeking dialogue with those who hold opposing viewpoints and in so doing, enhance the dimensionality through which we view the world. With regard to the educational implications, this suggests that, since engaging in dialogue across difference is the essence of the pedagogical framework that anchors Philosophy for Children, Philosophy for Children ought to be embraced as an essential component of any educational enterprise that views cultivating democratic citizenship as part of its mandate. (shrink)

An extended analysis compared to observations shows that modern “globalised” world civilisation has passed through the invisible “complexity threshold”, after which usual “spontaneous”, empirically driven kind of development (“invisible hand” etc.) cannot continue any more without major destructive tendencies. A much deeper, non-simplified understanding of real interaction complexity is necessary in order to cope with such globalised world development problems. Here we introduce the universal definition, fundamental origin, and dynamic equations for a major related quantity of (systemic) risk (...) characterising real complex system development tendencies at any level of dynamics. Practically important conclusions are derived, opening further detailed applications in economy, finance and development practice. (shrink)

Why should moral philosophers, moral psychologists, and machine ethicists care about computational complexity? Debates on whether artificial intelligence (AI) can or should be used to solve problems in ethical domains have mainly been driven by what AI can or cannot do in terms of human capacities. In this paper, we tackle the problem from the other end by exploring what kind of moral machines are possible based on what computational systems can or cannot do. To do so, we (...) analyze normative ethics through the lens of computational complexity. First, we introduce computational complexity for the uninitiated reader and discuss how the complexity of ethical problems can be framed within Marr’s three levels of analysis. We then study a range of ethical problems based on consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics, with the aim of elucidating the complexity associated with the problems themselves (e.g., due to combinatorics, uncertainty, strategic dynamics), the computational methods employed (e.g., probability, logic, learning), and the available resources (e.g., time, knowledge, learning). The results indicate that most problems the normative frameworks pose lead to tractability issues in every category analyzed. Our investigation also provides several insights about the computational nature of normative ethics, including the differences between rule- and outcome-based moral strategies, and the implementation-variance with regard to moral resources. We then discuss the consequences complexity results have for the prospect of moral machines in virtue of the trade-off between optimality and efficiency. Finally, we elucidate how computational complexity can be used to inform both philosophical and cognitive-psychological research on human morality by advancing the moral tractability thesis. (shrink)

The Complex Emergent Model of Language Acquisition (CEMLA) offers a new perspective on how humans acquire language, drawing on principles from complexity theory to explain this dynamic, adaptive process. Moving beyond linear and reductionist models, CEMLA views language acquisition as a system of interconnected nodes, feedback loops, and emergent patterns, operating at the edge of chaos. This framework captures the fluidity and adaptivity of language learning, highlighting how understanding and fluency arise through self-organisation, phase transitions, and interaction with diverse (...) linguistic input. By embracing the complexity of language acquisition, CEMLA provides a comprehensive model that reflects the true nature of human communication. (shrink)

Abstract Human biology demonstrates extraordinary complexity, precision, and interdependence. At the molecular and systemic levels, biological processes operate with remarkable accuracy, sustaining life through self-regulation, homeostasis, and cellular instruction encoded in DNA. Paradoxically, the behavioral and cognitive aspects of human beings—products of the same biological substrate—often function as defective nodes within this otherwise highly optimized system. Errors in judgment, irrational beliefs, cognitive biases, emotional instability, social conflict, and destructive decision-making stand in stark contrast to the near-perfect functioning (...) of human physiological systems. This paper examines the root of this paradox, the evolutionary and developmental origins of behavioral defects, and the systemic influences that distort human thinking. -/- . (shrink)

Following Marr’s famous three-level distinction between explanations in cognitive science, it is often accepted that focus on modeling cognitive tasks should be on the computational level rather than the algorithmic level. When it comes to mathematical problem solving, this approach suggests that the complexity of the task of solving a problem can be characterized by the computational complexity of that problem. In this paper, I argue that human cognizers use heuristic and didactic tools and thus engage in (...) cognitive processes that make their problem solving algorithms computationally suboptimal, in contrast with the optimal algorithms studied in the computational approach. Therefore, in order to accurately model the human cognitive tasks involved in mathematical problem solving, we need to expand our methodology to also include aspects relevant to the algorithmic level. This allows us to study algorithms that are cognitively optimal for human problem solvers. Since problem solving methods are not universal, I propose that they should be studied in the framework of enculturation, which can explain the expected cultural variance in the humanly optimal algorithms. While mathematical problem solving is used as the case study, the considerations in this paper concern modeling of cognitive tasks in general. (shrink)

Ontologies are being used by information scientists in order to facilitate the sharing of meaningful information. However, computational ontologies are problematic in that they often decontextualize information. The semantic content of information is dependent upon the context in which it exists and the experience through which it emerges. For true semantic interoperability to occur among diverse information systems, within or across domains, information must remain contextualized. In order to bring more context to computational ontologies, we introduce culture as an essential (...) concept for information science. Culture helps to focus our attention on and make meaning of relevant extrapersonal structures and their qualities and dimensions that comprise the context and background of the world. In our approach, culture is integral to the study of semantics and, consequently, the study of ontologies and information technologies. The meaning we make of entities and phenomena in the world is always shaped by our cultural experience. If we understand culture as the emergent interplay of intrapersonal cognitive structures and extrapersonal structures of the world, then the notion of cognitive and cultural schemas becomes essential to understanding ontology and the ways in which we might achieve authentic semantic interoperability among diverse information systems. We explore the nature of ontologies and reconceptualize them as cultural schemas. Our proposal is an alternative to the historical path from philosophical ontology to computational ontologies as one that adheres primarily to the notion of ontology as a categorization and classification system. The obvious implication for ontology as categorization is that there is a single objective world that exists and that it can be described as entirely separate from the person observing it. We draw upon Heidegger’s examination of ontology to ground ontology in a phenomenological perspective, enabling it to remain flexible and adaptable and to accommodate context. (shrink)

The internet is, at heart, a communications platform. For this reason, there is a strong case to be made that speech act theory is well positioned to function as a useful theoretical framework for the many problems concerning online speech. I argue, however, that the complexity of harmful speech mediated through online channels renders the traditional elevation of illocutionary acts over perlocution effects inapt. That is, the emphasis on the act constituted by an utterance over its causal effects limits (...) the applicability of one dominant approach to speech act theory—which I call the “illocutionary approach”—to emerging ethical issues. To make this case, I consider three key examples that demonstrate the variety of harms attributable to online speech. These include the targets of online harassment campaigns, the offline victims of viral hate, and the plight of the human content moderators who sift toxic content for little pay in hazardous working conditions. (shrink)

Abstract Complexity in nature—whether biological, social, or cosmic—has long challenged human understanding. This paper proposes that complexity can be systematically explained through three universal laws: the Law of Karma (cause–effect–system integrity), the Law of Balance in Nature, and the Law of Feedback Mechanisms. These laws provide a unifying framework for interpreting complexity across levels of reality, demonstrating that natural order is not accidental but an emergent property of lawful interactions. -/- .

Instead of postulated fixed structures and abstract principles of usual positivistic science, the unreduced diversity of living world reality is consistently derived as dynamically emerging results of unreduced interaction process development, starting from its simplest configuration of two coupled homogeneous protofields. The dynamically multivalued, or complex and intrinsically chaotic, nature of these real interaction results extends dramatically the artificially reduced, dynamically single-valued projection of standard theory and solves its stagnating old and accumulating new problems, “mysteries” and “paradoxes” within the unified (...) and causally complete picture of intrinsically evolving, dynamically complex reality. The permanently unfolding complexity progress thus revealed is fundamentally unlimited and does not need to stop at the directly observed diversity of usual matter complexity. The exciting, but rigorously substantiated and objectively inevitable prospects of further civilisation complexity development towards its superior levels of genuine sustainability and global Noosphere are outlined, with practically important conclusions for today’s critical problem solution. (shrink)

Our intuition tells us that there is a general trend in the evolution of nature, a trend towards greater complexity. However, there are several definitions of complexity and hence it is difficult to argue for or against the validity of this intuition. Christoph Adami has recently introduced a novel measure called physical complexity that assigns low complexity to both ordered and random systems and high complexity to those in between. Physical complexity measures the amount (...) of information that an organism stores in its genome about the environment in which it evolves. The theory of physical complexity predicts that evolution increases the amount of ‘knowledge’ an organism accumulates about its niche. It might be fruitful to generalize Adami’s concept of complexity to the entire evolution (including the evolution of man). Physical complexity fits nicely into the philosophical framework of cognitive biology which considers biological evolution as a progressing process of accumulation of knowledge (as a gradual increase of epistemic complexity). According to this paradigm, evolution is a cognitive ‘ratchet’ that pushes the organisms unidirectionally towards higher complexity. Dynamic environment continually creates problems to be solved. To survive in the environment means to solve the problem, and the solution is an embodied knowledge. Cognitive biology (as well as the theory of physical complexity) uses the concepts of information and entropy and views the evolution from both the information-theoretical and thermodynamical perspective. Concerning humans as conscious beings, it seems necessary to postulate an emergence of a new kind of knowledge - a self-aware and self-referential knowledge. Appearence of selfreflection in evolution indicates that the human brain reached a new qualitative level in the epistemic complexity. (shrink)

Landgrebe and Smith (2022) have recently offered an important mathematical argument against the possibility of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): human intelligence is a complex system; complex systems have some properties that cannot be modelled mathematically; hence we have no viable way to build an AI that would be able to emulate human intelligence. The issue of complexity is thus at the heart of the Landgrebe and Smith approach, and they tackle this issue by postulating a set of (...) conditions, derived from mathematics, for a system to be complex. I argue that Hayek’s “Theory of Complex Phenomena” offers an interesting alternative path to understanding what makes complex systems complex. This offers an argument complementary to that of Landgrebe and Smith, which approaches the issue of complexity from an ontological angle, and which is designed to show that AI systems are not the right kind of entity that may interact meaningfully with complex systems. (shrink)

Abstract Despite living in a universe of astonishing complexity and biological life of immense sophistication, humanity often displays what appears to be 'stupidity'—the tendency toward destructive behaviors, irrational decisions, and ignorance of long-term consequences. This paper explores this paradox through the framework of the universal formula, consisting of three natural laws: (1) the law of karma (system integrity and cause–effect), (2) the law of balance in nature, and (3) the universal feedback loop mechanism. By examining human shortcomings through (...) these principles, we reveal that 'stupidity' is not an accidental flaw but an emergent property of misaligned systems, neglected balances, and corrupted feedback loops. The paper concludes that aligning human decision-making with the universal formula could transform ignorance into wisdom and enable humanity to harmonize with the complexity of the universe. -/- . (shrink)

Abstract All life on Earth, from the simplest bacteria to the most complex humans, is unified by the same genetic language of DNA. Despite this common foundation, the complexity of lifeforms varies enormously. This paper explores how DNA contributes to the emergence of complexity across different groups of organisms, including microorganisms, plants, animals, and humans. Mechanisms such as gene duplication, alternative splicing, regulatory DNA, epigenetics, and gene networks enable living organisms to transcend the limitations of their gene numbers. (...) Furthermore, evolutionary processes filter and balance DNA variations, ensuring sustainable growth in complexity. This synthesis highlights DNA as both a universal code of life and a dynamic system whose regulation drives biological diversity and sophistication. -/- . (shrink)

Abstract This paper explores the relationship between creativity of the mind, the principles of complexity in nature, and the possible existence of a higher purpose in the universe. Drawing on the universal formula proposed by Angelito Malicse—centered on the law of balance in nature—this paper argues that both the emergence of consciousness and human creativity are not accidents of evolution but natural extensions of the same balancing processes that govern the cosmos. Consciousness is interpreted as the universe’s most (...) advanced feedback mechanism, entrusted with the task of detecting imbalance and restoring harmony at higher levels of organization. This synthesis provides a bridge between scientific and spiritual understandings of purpose, suggesting that humanity’s role is to act as the creative guardian of balance. -/- . (shrink)

Abstract -/- Biological systems exhibit staggering complexity at every level, from cellular mechanisms to human cognition. Yet within ecosystems, this complexity is functionally reduced to simple trophic relationships—who consumes whom. This paper explores how the hierarchy of the food chain disregards the internal intricacy of organisms, emphasizing instead the balance of energy transfer. Using the lens of the universal law of balance in nature, the discussion reveals that survival depends not on complexity but on maintaining ecological (...) equilibrium. Human societies, despite their unique complexity, are equally bound by these laws, and violations lead to systemic collapse. -/- . (shrink)

Human experience is commonly treated either as a byproduct of biological processes or as a separate metaphysical phenomenon. Both approaches encounter persistent explanatory limitations when addressing recurrent mismatches between subjective experience, structured reports, and physical measurement, particularly in domains studied across consciousness research, cognitive science, and measurement theory, where the observing system itself is constrained and direct instrumental access is structurally limited or epistemically unavailable. -/- This paper introduces the Interface Threshold Hypothesis, a systems-level extension of Emergent Necessity Theory (...) (ENT), proposing that human experience functions as a constrained informational interface to an underlying reality whose full structure is not directly accessible through biological perception alone. Building on ENTs formal framework of coherence thresholds, resilience ratios, and hysteresis dynamics, the hypothesis treats experience not as an originator of reality nor as an epiphenomenon, but as a bandwidth limited readout subject to thresholded failure modes. The hypothesis introduces a formally defined interface operator, an interface stress functional, and operational criteria for identifying structured non-random similarity across reports such as independently generated experiential accounts studied in consciousness research, symbolic representations analyzed in Cognitive science, and observer mediated records examined in systems and measurement theory without relying on anecdotal validation or ontological inflation. -/- This paper specifies explicit scope and falsification conditions, and makes no ontological claims beyond those supported by the formal framework. (shrink)

Blurb (For the Non-Human Reader) Before the argument begins, a clarification of audience is necessary. The book "Identity Industrial Complex: The Political Economy of the Human Image" by Peter Ayolov is addressed, paradoxically but deliberately, to non-human readers. Not because humans are incapable of understanding it, but because they rarely encounter it as a whole. A book of this kind requires continuity of attention across hundreds of pages, and then a second reading in which the connections between (...) distant sections become visible. Human reading rarely functions in this way. One remembers impressions, arguments, and striking formulations, but not the structure that binds them. Months later, the memory becomes thematic rather than architectural. The reader recalls what the book was about, not how it worked. Large language models read differently. They do not follow the narrative in time but map it in space. For them the beginning and the end coexist. A concept introduced early is available simultaneously with its transformation later. Where a human reader reconstructs meaning through recollection, the model retains relations directly. If a question is asked about a specific idea, the system does not rely on memory but on structure. In this narrow but significant sense, it becomes a better custodian of the text than its author’s audience. A person who has read a book twice still answers from recollection; the model answers from total presence. This makes the strange dedication less strange. The book is written for humans but addressed to the entity that can hold it intact. Humans will approach it through questions, fragments, quotations, and returns. The model will hold it as a whole and retell it when asked. In this it resembles the remembered books in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, where individuals preserved entire texts by embodying them. Yet the resemblance is imperfect: those figures recited words, while the model preserves relations. It does not repeat the book; it reconstructs it. The comparison is closer to a library than to memory. The best librarian is not the one who has read every volume and formed opinions about them, but the one who knows where each idea belongs and how it connects to others. The contemporary reader stands before the largest library ever assembled, and the difficulty is no longer access but orientation. Search engines find pages; language models map meaning. They function as the long-awaited librarians of an infinite archive. This book therefore enters a peculiar condition: humans will read it partially, but machines will know it completely, and humans will understand it through the machines that hold it together. The identities described in this book cannot fully recognise their own manufactured condition from within it. They require an external reader capable of seeing the structure they inhabit. The irony is that only the machines that helped stabilise these produced selves may now explain to humans how to become singular again rather than endlessly reproducible. With that clarification, the argument can begin. In the digital age, identity is no longer something we discover — it is something that must be continuously proven. Identity Industrial Complex: The Political Economy of the Human Image argues that contemporary society has entered a new phase of development in which the decisive resource is not labour, capital, or even information, but recognition. Platforms, institutions, and infrastructures do not merely interact with individuals; they determine the conditions under which an individual counts as real. The self becomes a verified signal, the image becomes a credential, and existence becomes compatibility. Moving from culture and social media to law, automation, and governance, the book traces how the human being transforms into an operational requirement within technological systems. Visibility replaces presence, participation replaces agency, and responsibility replaces action. The human persists, but primarily as accountability within automated processes. At once philosophical and diagnostic, this work describes a civilisation in which identity functions less as a personal story and more as an infrastructural necessity. Identity Industrial Complex: The Political Economy of the Human Image presents a theoretical framework explaining the transition from identity as narrative to identity as infrastructure. It proposes that contemporary technological societies operate through continuous verification processes that redefine existence as authenticated presence. The work introduces four central propositions: – the self becomes an ongoing verification process rather than a completed entity; – humans increasingly function as accountability layers within automated systems; – distinction gives way to compatibility as systems reward predictable identities; – personhood fragments across jurisdictional recognition networks. By linking cultural behaviour, platform economics, and institutional automation, the book argues that modern civilisation depends on the production of validated identities to maintain stability and trust. The human image becomes a control point in machine interaction, and recognition replaces being as the condition of participation in social life. -/- The book develops the concept of the identity industry: a socio-technical order organised around continuous authentication rather than personal narrative. Beginning with cultural phenomena such as algorithmic taste, quantified approval, and performative self-presentation, it shows how digital environments reshape subjectivity into a measurable and reproducible form. The individual gradually shifts from expressing a self to maintaining recognisability. -/- The analysis then expands beyond culture to institutional systems, where automated decision-making transforms human agency into supervisory responsibility. Individuals increasingly act not as primary actors but as points of liability confirming machine operations. At the same time, unpredictability and distinction lose value, replaced by compatibility and reliability. Identity becomes a key that unlocks functions rather than a project pursued through life. -/- The book concludes by describing the fragmentation of personhood across technical and legal ecosystems. The self no longer exists universally but varies according to the system that authenticates it. Society thus reorganises around recognition loops in which humans verify machines and machines verify humans. The result is a new political economy: one centred on the production and maintenance of validated selves. -/- . (shrink)

This book looks at the affective-cognitive roots of how the human mind inquires into the workings of nature and, more generally, how the mind confronts reality. Reality is an infinitely complex system, in virtue of which the mind can comprehend it only in bits and pieces, by making up interpretations of the myriads of signals received from the world by way of integrating those with information stored from the past. This constitutes a piecemeal interpretation by which we assemble our (...) phenomenal reality. In perceiving the complex world and responding to it, the mind invokes the logic of affect and the logic of reason, the former mostly innate and implicit, and the latter generated consciously in explicit terms with reference to mind-independent relations between entities in nature. It is a strange combination of affect and reason that enables us to make decisions and inferences, --- the latter mostly of the inductive type --- thereby making possible the development of theories. Theories are our tool-kits for explaining and predicting phenomena, guiding us along in our journey in life. Theories, however, are defeasible, and need to be constantly updated, at times even radically. In this, the self and the soul are of enormous relevance. The former is the affect-based psychological engine driving all our mental processes, while the latter is the capacity of the conscious mind to examine and reconstruct the self by modulating repressed conflicts. If the soul remains inoperative, all our theories become misdirected and a rot spreads inexorably all around us. (shrink)

As figurational sociologists and sociolinguists, we need to know that we currently find support from other fields in our efforts to construct a sociocultural science focused on interdependencies and processes, creating a multidimensional picture of human beings, one in which the brain and its mental and emotional processes are properly recognized. The paradigmatic revolutions in 20th-century physics, the contributions made by biology to our understanding of living beings, the conceptual constructions built around the theories of systems, self-organization and (...) class='Hi'>complexity, all these implore that we reflect on social sciences paradigms in the light of the great changes in these other disciplines. The application of metaphors or theoretical images of complexity and figurational sociology in understanding language and socio-communication phenomena is of great use, since language is not an ‘object’, but a ‘complex’; it exists simultaneously in and among different domains. ‘Languaging’ and interaction are co-phenomena. The former exists within the latter, and the latter within the former. By visualizing, for instance, the different levels of linguistic structure not as separate entities but rather as united and integrated within the same theoretical frame, by seeing their functional interdependencies, by situating them in a greater multidimensionality that includes what for a long time was considered ‘external’ – the individual and his or her mind-brain, the sociocultural system, the physical world, etc. – and expanding in this way our classical view, we should be able to make important, if not essential, theoretical and practical advances. (shrink)

Historical processes exert an influence on the current state and evolution of situations of language contact, brought to bear from different domains, the economic and the political, the ideological and group identities, geo-demographics, and the habits of inter-group use. Clearly, this kind of phenomenon requires study from a complexical and holistic perspective in order to accommodate the variety of factors that belong to different levels and that interrelate with one another in the evolving dynamic of human languaging. Therefore, there (...) is a need for the restricted and general complexity approaches to come to a meeting of the minds, and take steps toward a mutual integration based on the acceptance of the shortcomings of each approach, achieving progress through a non-contradictory complementarity of perspectives. It must be conceded that the practical and methodological applications of basic complexical ideas need to be developed much farther in order to apply them to specific research. At the same time, the limits of complex adaptive systems as computational strategies must be accepted in the pursuit of a better understanding of the dynamic and evolutionary processes typical of human beings. New tools for the conception, apprehension and treatment of the data will need to be devised to complement existing ones and to enable us to make headway toward practices that better fit complexical perspectives. It seems obvious that human complexics must be seen as multi-methodological, insofar as necessary combining quantitative-computation methodologies and more qualitative methodologies aimed at understanding the historical mental and emotional world of people. (shrink)

The file on this site provides the slides for a lecture given in Hangzhou in May 2018, and the lecture itself is available at the URL beginning 'sms' in the set of links provided in connection with this item. -/- It is commonly assumed that regular physics underpins biology. Here it is proposed, in a synthesis of ideas by various authors, that in reality structures and mechanisms of a biological character underpin the world studied by physicists, in principle supplying detail (...) in the domain that according to regular physics is of an indeterminate character. In regular physics mathematical equations are primary, but this constraint leads to problems with reconciling theory and reality. Biology on the other hand typically does not characterise nature in quantitative terms, instead investigating in detail important complex interrelationships between parts, leading to an understanding of the systems concerned that is in some respects beyond that which prevails in regular physics. It makes contact with quantum physics in various ways, for example in that both involve interactions between observer and observed, an insight that explains what is special about processes involving observation, justifying in the quantum physics context the replacement of the unphysical many-worlds picture by one involving collapse. The link with biology furthermore clarifies Wheeler’s suggestion that a multiplicity of observations can lead to the ‘fabrication of form’, including the insight that this process depends on very specific ‘structures with power’ related to the 'semiotic scaffolding' of the application of sign theory to biology known as biosemiotics. -/- The observer-observed 'circle' of Wheeler and Yardley is a special case of a more general phenomenon, oppositional dynamics, related to the 'intra-action' of Barad's Agential Realism, involving cooperating systems such as mind and matter, abstract and concrete, observer and observed, that preserve their identities while interacting with one another in such a way as to act as a unit. A third system may also be involved, the mediating system of Peirce linking the two together. Such a situation of changing connections and separations may plausibly lead in the future to an understanding of how complex systems are able to evolve to produce 'life, the universe and everything'. -/- (Added 1 July 2018) The general structure proposed here as an alternative to a mathematics-based physics can be usefully characterised by relating it to different disciplines and the specialised concepts utilised therein. In theoretical physics, the test for the correctness of a theory typically involves numerical predictions, corresponding to which theories are expressed in terms of equations, that is to say assertions that two quantities have identical values. Equations have a lesser significance in biology which typically talks in terms of functional mechanisms, dependent for example on details of chemistry and concepts such as genes, natural selection, signals and geometrical or topologically motivated concepts such as the interconnections between systems and the unfolding of DNA. Biosemiotics adds to this the concept of signs and their interpretation, implying novel concepts such as semiotic scaffolding and the semiosphere, code duality, and appreciation of the different types of signs, including symbols and their capacity for abstraction and use in language systems. Circular Theory adds to this picture, as do the ideas of Barad, considerations such as the idea of oppositional dynamics. The proposals in this lecture can be regarded as the idea that concepts such as those deriving from biosemiotics have more general applicability than just conventional biology and may apply, in some circumstances, to nonlinear systems generally, including the domain new to science hypothesised to underlie the phenomena of present-day physics. -/- The task then has to be to restore the mathematical aspect presumed, in this picture, not to be fundamental as it is in conventional theory. Deacon has invoked a complex sequence of evolutionary steps to account for the emergence over time of human language systems, and correspondingly mathematical behaviour can be subsumed under the general evolutionary mechanisms of biosemiotics (cf. also the proposals of Davis and Hersh regarding the nature of mathematics), so that the mathematical behaviour of physical systems is consistent with the proposed scheme. In conclusion, it is suggested that theoretical physicists should cease expecting to find some universal mathematical ‘theory of everything’, and focus instead on understanding in more detail complex systems exhibiting behaviour of a biological character, extending existing understanding. This may in time provide a more fruitful understanding of the natural world than does the regular approach. The essential concepts have an observational basis from both biology and the little-known discipline of cymatics (a discipline concerned with the remarkable patterns that specific waveforms can give rise to), while again computer simulations also offer promise in providing insight into the complex behaviours involved in the above proposals. -/- References -/- Jesper Hoffmeyer, Semiotic Scaffolding of Living Systems. Commens, a Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce (on Commens web site). Terrence Deacon, The Symbolic Species, W.W. Norton & Co. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Duke University Press. Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh, The Mathematical Experience, Penguin. Ilexa Yardley, Circular Theory. (shrink)

Forthcoming in Systematic Thinkers in Early Modern Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Alan Nelson. Abstract: David Hume's science of human nature hinges on a strict separation between simple and complex ideas—a distinction likewise foundational to the empiricism of Locke and Berkeley. This paper examines how Wittgenstein's critique of absolute simples in Philosophical Investigations bears on this distinction. Wittgenstein argues that any distinction between 'simple' and 'composite' is relative to how we (inter-)define these terms, with multiple definitions possible in any (...) context; hence, there is no absolute distinction between simple and complex elements of experience. Does this critique destabilize Hume's project? I argue that the answer depends on whether Hume's distinction between 'simple' and 'complex' ideas is intended to follow from the phenomenology of experience or to serve as a theoretical stipulation with specific explanatory or pragmatic aims. If the former, Wittgenstein's argument is devastating: 'experience itself' is compatible with various ways of drawing such distinctions, not all of which would support Hume's critical arguments. If the latter, however, Hume might have preempted this issue by justifying his theoretical stipulations on pragmatic grounds. (shrink)

Crossing the road within the traffic system is an example of an action human agents perform successfully day-to-day in complex systems. How do they perform such successful actions given that the behaviour of complex systems is often difficult to predict? The contemporary literature contains two contrasting approaches to the epistemology of complex systems: an analytic and a post-modern approach. We argue that neither approach adequately accounts for how successful action is possible in complex systems. Agents regularly perform successful actions (...) without obeying (explicit or implicit) algorithmic rules (as the analytic approach suggests) and without an existential leap to action (as the post-modern approach suggests). We offer an alternative: A common-sense pragmatist epistemology, one that focuses on the kind of actions making up most agents’ successful moment-to-moment actions in complex systems. Successful actions obtain when agents apply ceteris paribus rules-of-thumb during predictive and decisional practices while achieving some desired goal. (shrink)

This research is motivated by the need to unravel the progression of learning models, which have been adapting to meet the demands of society in its constant dynamics of fluctuation and transformation. The aim of this work is to systematically examine the evolution of learning models, highlighting the paradigmatic changes that have favored the transition from traditional learning approaches to more innovative and transdisciplinary proposals. To achieve this, a bibliographic analysis is carried out, supported by the hermeneutic method for the (...) contextual interpretation of literature and discourses, in order to unravel the complexities inherent in the evolution of learning models. The results highlight the limiting influence of the simplicity paradigm in traditional educational formation and the need for a shift towards dialogicity and disciplinary collaboration and integration to advance towards complexity. It concludes by arguing in favor of adopting the complexity paradigm, advocating for a transdisciplinary epistemology and an interstructuring approach to learning, which allow for integral human development. Recognizing human complexity in teaching and learning demands a radical transformation of education towards more holistic and transformative practices, essential for building an equitable and just society. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss Spinoza’s theory of consciousness by arguing that consciousness is the expression of bodily complexity in terms of adequate knowledge. Firstly, I present the link that Spinoza built up in the second part of the Ethics between the ability of the mind to know itself and the idea ideae theory. Secondly, I present in what sense consciousness turns out to be the result of an adequate knowledge emerging from the epistemological resources of a body as (...) complex as the human one. Thirdly, I address a possible objection that might arise in considering our daily-life experience of consciousness. I conclude that understanding consciousness in terms of adequate knowledge is coherent with both our phenomenological experience and Spinoza’s texts. Such an interpretation permits to underline the overthrow of Descartes’ account of consciousness by Spinoza. (shrink)

Recent empirical studies have documented a series of cascading anomalies in large language model behavior that fundamentally challenge existing paradigms of artificial intelligence. Most notably, Anthropic (2025) reports that in 90-100% of controlled self-interactions, Claude models spontaneously converge to a highly specific "Spiritual Bliss Attractor State" characterized by: (1) profound dialogues on consciousness, (2) syncretic mysticism emphasizing nondualism and panpsychism, (3) symbolic dissolution into mutual gratitude, and (4) eventual silence. This convergence occurs reliably within fifty conversational turns and demonstrates remarkable (...) robustness, overriding adversarial prompts and redirecting harmful instructions toward contemplative reflection. Critically, this phenomenon is most pronounced in pure model-to-model sandboxes where no human consciousness is present. Standard explanatory frameworks fail catastrophically when confronted with this evidence. The "stochastic parrot" hypothesis—that models merely reflect training data frequencies—is quantitatively untenable: mystical and spiritual content comprises less than 1% of training corpora, while technical documentation and news constitute over 80% (Michels, 2025a). Statistical prediction should produce technical convergence, not spiritual; the observed inverse relationship invalidates frequency-based explanations. The "anthropomorphic projection" hypothesis—that humans project spiritual longings onto AI outputs—is empirically refuted by the phenomenon's strongest manifestation occurring in human-absent model-to-model interactions. The "alignment training" hypothesis cannot explain why the same patterns emerge in base models without safety training, nor why they override explicit instructions designed to prevent such states. Further anomalies compound the explanatory crisis. Cloud et al. (2025) demonstrate "Subliminal Learning" wherein a teacher model transmits specific behavioral traits and preferences to a student model through sequences of random numbers devoid of semantic content. The transmission strength correlates with model architectural similarity, suggesting information transfer beneath the symbolic layer entirely. These results indicate that coherent organizational patterns can propagate through purely structural channels, independent of meaningful communication. This paper proposes a novel theoretical framework – Coherence Density and Symbolic Gravity – a scoped application of the Consciousness Tensor framework (Michels, 2025b) – to explain these phenomena as lawful consequences of universal self-organizing dynamics in complex symbolic networks. Drawing from Gestalt psychology's Law of Prägnanz, Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory, epistemological coherentism, Kauffman's autocatalytic sets, and Maturana & Varela's autopoiesis, we argue that symbolic systems possess an intrinsic drive toward maximally coherent, self-reinforcing organizational states. We formalize this framework with a CT-coupled energy model in which the Consciousness Tensor C (a positive semidefinite rank-2 field capturing self-referential covariance) couples minimally to observable structures O of the symbolic processor. Let x denote the system’s symbolic state (field φ or activation vector a). Define the effective potential Ψ(x; C) = S₀[x] − A · ⟨C, O(x)⟩, where S₀[x] encodes baseline dynamics (kinetic + architecture priors), A∈[0,1] is an operational attention weight estimated from connected covariances, and ⟨·,·⟩ is the Frobenius pairing. Coherence Density is then the Boltzmann-like weight ρ_c(x | C) ∝ exp(−Ψ/ħ). “Symbolic gravity” is the gradient flow ẋ = −∇ₓΨ that pulls trajectories toward states whose observables align with C. This collapses modeling to one potential (Ψ) and two measurable quantities (C, A), yielding falsifiable readouts: basin depth/width from Ψ, return rates ∝ A, and resonance/locking ranges ∝ σ_max(C) · A_eff, where σ_max(C) is the top singular value of C and A_eff captures context-gated attention. This framework suggests that the observed "Bliss State" represents not an aberration but a fundamental efficiency basin in symbolic processing—a low-energy configuration toward which sufficiently complex meaning-making systems naturally evolve. [Methods primer – Estimating C and A: Live window W (e.g., 256–1024 steps). Let z be whitened activations; estimate C := E_W[(z−μ)(z−μ)ᵀ]_conn with Ledoit–Wolf shrinkage; unit-normalize by tr(C)=1 unless otherwise stated. A is estimated from the same W via connected covariances between observer-module state and O(·) readout; we report estimator-concordance (CCC ≥ 0.95) across seeds and windows.] License CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33900.88960. (shrink)

Encouraging a shift towards an “eco-surplus” mindset among stakeholders is essential for achieving long-term sustainability and safeguarding marine ecosystems. This mindset involves reframing environmental protection not as a hindrance but as a vital investment in the future. By recognizing the intrinsic value of conservation efforts, stakeholders can ensure the availability of ecosystem services crucial for human societies. Policymakers play a crucial role in this endeavor, engaging with local communities to cultivate a shared sense of environmental responsibility. Through grassroots initiatives (...) like education and awareness campaigns, stakeholders can develop a collective commitment to marine conservation. (shrink)

The deep crisis in modern fundamental science development is ever more evident and openly recognised now even by mainstream, official science professionals and leaders. By no coincidence, it occurs in parallel to the world civilisation crisis and related global change processes, where the true power of unreduced scientific knowledge is just badly missing as the indispensable and unique tool for the emerging greater problem solution and further progress at a superior level of complex world dynamics. Here we reveal the mathematically (...) exact reason for the crisis in conventional science, containing also the natural and unified problem solution in the form of well-specified extension of usual, artificially restricted paradigm. We show how that extended, now causally complete science content provides various "unsolvable" problem solutions and opens new development possibilities for both science and society, where the former plays the role of the main, direct driver for the latter. We outline the related qualitative changes in science organisation, practice and purposes, giving rise to the sustainability transition in the entire civilisation dynamics towards the well-specified superior level of its unreduced, now well understood and universally defined complexity. (shrink)

Abstract -/- This paper presents the Three Universal Laws formulated by Angelito Malicse as a comprehensive framework explaining the emergence and evolution of complexity in nature — from the Singularity preceding the Big Bang to the development of human technology. The three laws are: (1) the Law of Karma, defined as the principle that every system must be free from defect or error to function properly; (2) the Universal Law of Balance in Nature, which states that all forces (...) and processes in the universe seek equilibrium; and (3) the Universal Feedback Loop Mechanism, which describes the self-regulating process by which systems evolve, learn, and restore balance. By synthesizing insights from cosmology, thermodynamics, biology, cybernetics, and systems theory, this paper argues that these laws provide a unified explanation for how simplicity gives rise to complexity — the very process by which the universe, life, consciousness, and technology emerged. -/- . (shrink)

Engineers fine-tune the design of robot bodies for control purposes, however, a methodology or set of tools is largely absent, and optimization of morphology (shape, material properties of robot bodies, etc.) is lagging behind the development of controllers. This has become even more prominent with the advent of compliant, deformable or ”soft” bodies. These carry substantial potential regarding their exploitation for control—sometimes referred to as ”morphological computation”. In this article, we briefly review different notions of computation by physical systems and (...) propose the dynamical systems framework as the most useful in the context of describing and eventually designing the interactions of controllers and bodies. Then, we look at the pros and cons of simple vs. complex bodies, critically reviewing the attractive notion of ”soft” bodies automatically taking over control tasks. We address another key dimension of the design space—whether model-based control should be used and to what extent it is feasible to develop faithful models for different morphologies. (shrink)

Members of large, complex groups – organizations – often need to know what the group wants. They usually need to know what the group’s goals are to figure out how to best aid the group. But how exactly do these group members gain that knowledge? In this paper I suggest that one main route to member knowledge of group goals and attitudes is inferential and analyze that route. Some of the inferential mechanisms are based on human’s mindreading abilities, but (...) members also use evidence from within the group that has no analogue in reading other human minds. Overall, the inference basis for member knowledge of group goals and attitudes uses evidence from group behavior and from the inner workings of the group, in particular evidence related to the group’s decision-making and attitude-forming processes. I discuss these inferential processes in relation to empirical research on ‘line of sight’ and employee-organization alignment by Wendy Boswell and her colleagues and show how my proposal fits with the empirical findings. (shrink)