Luciano Floridi reinterprets and re-ontologizes our world informationally. That part of his theory may (or may not) work, but what matters for this paper’s topic is that when it comes to defining what the value of Being is, his... more
Luciano Floridi reinterprets and re-ontologizes our world informationally. That part of his theory may (or may not) work, but what matters for this paper’s topic is that when it comes to defining what the value of Being is, his informational-ontological interpretation is based on order, organization, and structure. Therefore, there is a common ground between his interpretation and the way modern thermodynamics formalizes the concept of order. Floridi proposes to think of Good as qualitative order and Evil as its absence, or entropy. However, the kind of entities that are of importance to us for our judgments and interventions as agents are ordered and thus valuable because they exist far from equilibrium. In this paper I shall attempt to establish that far-from-equilibrium systems attain ever increasing degrees of order at the cost of faster entropy production. Yet, inversely, by promoting an increase in entropy production, more complex and ordered forms emerge on Earth. Entropy production and order are thus complementary; they imply each other reciprocally. By promoting Evil in Floridi’s sense, Good happens lawfully because order is nature’s favorite way of producing entropy. In short, moving against entropy only creates more entropy
Over its 4.6 billion year history, the time-dependent behavior of planet Earth, from the origin and emergence of life to the explosive globalization of human culture going on today, shows the progressive and accelerating production of... more
Over its 4.6 billion year history, the time-dependent behavior of planet Earth, from the origin and emergence of life to the explosive globalization of human culture going on today, shows the progressive and accelerating production of increasingly more highly ordered dynamic states. Recent advances in the study of spontaneous ordering provide both a minimal ontological framework required for causally addressing such systems, and the nomological basis for understanding the ubiquitous or universal generic nature of such ordering itself. This paper briefly outlines the main points.
Abstract: In this article, we present the analysis of the process of decision-making by applying the main concepts of complexity science linked with the theories of emotions. Decision-making in our personal or immediate social life... more
Abstract: In this article, we present the analysis of the process of decision-making by applying the main concepts of complexity science linked with the theories of emotions. Decision-making in our personal or immediate social life concerns our future and involves surprises, uncertainty, and complexity. This is why complexity science, and especially the idea of self-organization is the most suitable for studying this unpredictable and surprising phenomenon. We propose that the process of decision-making in human life goes through three phases: the will phase, the choice phase, and the decision phase. Primary emotions of surprise and anticipation and self-organizing patterns of emotions such as curiosity, attraction, doubt, optimism, resourcefulness, open-mindedness, enjoyment of unknown, and enthusiasm play a significant role in this process. In the discussion, the process of decision-making from the perspective of metacognition is included.
The presentation proposes to complement an existing development on meaning generation for animals, humans and artificial agents by looking at what could have existed at pre-biotic times and what could be a post-human meaning generation.... more
The presentation proposes to complement an existing development on meaning generation for animals, humans and artificial agents by looking at what could have existed at pre-biotic times and what could be a post-human meaning generation. The core of the approach is based on an existing model for meaning generation: the Meaning Generator System (MGS). The MGS is part of an agent submitted to an internal constraint. The MGS generates a meaning when it receives an information that has a connection with the constraint. The generated meaning is used by the agent to implement an action (physical, biological or mental) aimed at satisfying the constraint. The action can be in or out the agent. The purpose of the presentation is to widen the MGS approach in order to reach a coverage for information, constraint and meaning from a pre-biotic level to a possible post-human one. We present the MGS for animals, humans and artificial agents with the corresponding constraints. We then look at what could have been a constraint at a pre-biotic far from thermodynamic equilibrium level. At the other end of the spectrum we look at a possible post-human status with an evolution of a 'limit anxiety' human constraint and also with AAs submitted to animal or human type constraints. Such approach links information science with physics, evolution, anthropology, semiotics and human mind. Continuations are proposed.
