Eco-Cognitive Computationalism

This book mainly focuses on the widely distributed nature of computational tools, models, and methods, ultimately related to the current importance of computational machines as mediators of cognition. An entirely new eco-cognitive approach to computation is offered, to underline the question of the overwhelming cognitive domestication of ignorant entities, which is persistently at work in our current societies. Eco-cognitive computationalism does not aim at furnishing an ultimate and static definition of the concepts of information, cognition, and computation, instead, it intends, by respecting their historical and dynamical character, to propose an intellectual framework that depicts how we can understand their forms of emergence and the modification of their meanings, also dealing with impressive unconventional non-digital cases. The new proposed perspective also leads to a clear description of the divergence between weak and strong levels of creative abductive hypothetical cognition: weak accomplishments are related to locked abductive strategies, typical of computational machines, and deep creativity is instead related to unlocked abductive strategies, which characterize human cognizers, who benefit from the so-called eco-cognitive openness.

Offers an entirely new dynamic perspective on the nature of computation Highlights the role of unconventional computation as an incessant and terrific process of cognitive domestication of ignorant entities Describes the kinds of cognitive creativity that differently characterizes computational entities and human cognizers

Autorentext

Lorenzo Magnani, philosopher, epistemologist, and cognitive scientist, is a professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Pavia, Italy, and the director of its Computational Philosophy Laboratory. Authors and editor of many books and proceedings and of about 400 publications in 2015 has been appointed member of the International Academy for the Philosophy of the Sciences (AIPS). He is the editor of the Book Series Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics (SAPERE), Springer, Switzerland.

Inhalt
Computationalism in a Dynamic and Distributed Eco-Cognitive Perspective.- Eco-Cognitive Computationalism.- AlphaGo, Locked Strategies, and Eco-Cognitive Openness.- Computational Domestication of Ignorant Entities- Conclusion.