Digital Philosophy

Computational and information-theoretic research in philosophy has become increasingly fertile and pervasive, giving rise to a wealth of interesting results. In consequence, a new and vitally important field has emerged, the philosophy of information (PI). This essay is the first attempt to analyse the nature of PI systematically. PI is defined as the philosophical field concerned with the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation, and sciences, and the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. I argue that PI is a mature discipline for three reasons: it represents an autonomous field of research; it provides an innovative approach to both traditional and new philosophical topics; and it can stand beside other branches of philosophy, offering a systematic treatment of the conceptual foundations of the world of information and the information society.

Computing is changing the traditional field of Philosophy of Science in a very profound way. First as a methodological tool, computing makes possible "experimental Philosophy" which is able to provide practical tests for different philosophical ideas. At the same time the ideal object of investigation of the Philosophy of Science is changing. For a long period of time the ideal science was Physics (e.g. Popper, Carnap, Kuhn, and Chalmers). Now the focus is shifting to the field of Computing/Informatics. There are many good reasons for this paradigm shift, one of those being a long standing need of a new meeting between the sciences and humanities, for which the new discipline of Computing/Informatics gives innumerable possibilities. Contrary to Physics, Computing/Informatics is very much human-centered. It brings a potential for a new Renaissance, where Science and Humanities, Arts and Engineering can reach a new synthesis, so very much needed in our intellectually split culture. This paper investigates contemporary trends and the relation between the Philosophy of Science and the Philosophy of Computing and Information, which is equivalent to the present relation between Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Physics.

Scientific articles have semantic contents that are usually quite specific to their disciplinary origins. To characterize such semantic contents, topic-modeling algorithms make it possible to identify topics that run throughout corpora. However, they remain limited when it comes to investigating the extent to which topics are jointly used together in specific documents and form particular associative patterns. Here, we propose to characterize such patterns through the identification of "topic associative rules" that describe how topics are associated within given sets of documents. As a case study, we use a corpus from a subfield of the humanities-the philosophy of science-consisting of the complete full-text content of one of its main journals: Philosophy of Science. On the basis of a pre-existing topic modeling, we develop a methodology with which we infer a set of 96 topic associative rules that characterize specific types of articles depending on how these articles combine topics in peculiar patterns. Such rules offer a finer-grained window onto the semantic content of the corpus and can be interpreted as "topical recipes" for distinct types of philosophy of science articles. Examining rule networks and rule predictive success for different article types, we find a positive correlation between topological features of rule networks (connectivity) and the reliability of rule predictions (as summarized by the F-measure). Topic associative rules thereby not only contribute to characterizing the semantic contents of corpora at a finer granularity than topic modeling, but may also help to classify documents or identify document types, for instance to improve natural language generation processes.

The following review explores Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE) in terms of comparative philosophy, supporting IIE as the most relevant and significant development of the field of Information Ethics (IE). The focus of the review is threefold. First, it will review the core presumption of the field of IIE, that being the demand for an inter- mission in the pursuit of a founding philosophy for IE in order to first address the philosophical biases of IE by western philosophy. Second, a history of the various philosophical streams of IIE will be outlined, including its literature and pioneering contributors. Lastly, a new synthesis of comparative philosophies in IIE will be offered, looking towards a future evolution of the field. Examining the interchange between contemporary information ethicists regarding the discipline of IIE, the review first outlines the previously established presumptions of the field of IIE that posit the need for an IE as grounded in western sensibilities. The author then addresses the implications of the foregoing presumption from several non-western viewpoints, arguing that IIE does in fact find roots in non-western philosophies as established in the concluding synthesis of western and eastern philosophical traditions.

[English abstract] This article reflects on the modelization of texts of our cultural heritage in the current very early phase of Digital Philology by asking the question: what "form" are we forcing upon our texts? I explore three ways in which our textual models reflect our cultural and technologicalbias: first, the OHCO hierarchical model behind TEI XML; second, the sequential alphabetical model based on Western print, lying behind Unicode. A third aspect has been less explored in the scholarly discussion: citation protocols such as CITE/CTS are based on specific corpora. For example, the canonic corpora for classical Greek and Latin texts are TLG and PHI 5.3. Each of those corpora freezes author identification, authorship attribution, text boundaries, paragraph and line numbering in a specific canonic form. A dilemma arises: on the one side, interoperability requires that CTS URIs are based on a fixed textual canon, which hinders scholarly modifications of that canon; on the other side, the principles of philology suggest that URIs point to specific versions of texts, which in its turn cripples the interoperability potential of the protocol.

[Italian abstract] L'articolo costituisce una riflessione sulla modellizzazione dei testi appartenenti alla nostra tradizione culturale in questa fase aurorale della Filologia Digitale e parte dalla domanda: che "forma" stiamo dando ai nostri testi? Vengono asplorati tre aspetti per cui i nostri modelli testuali riflettono i nostri presupposti culturali e tecnologici: in primo luogo, il modello gerarchico OHCO che sta alla base di TEI XML; in secondo luogo, il modello sequenziale alfabetico basato sulla stampa delle lingue occidentali, che sta alla base di Unicode. Un terzo aspetto, poi, è il meno esplorato nella ricerca: protocolli per la citazione testuale come CITE/CTS sono basati su corpora specifici. Per esempio, i corpora canonici per i testi greci e latini classici sono il TLG e il PHI 5.3. Ciascuno di questi corpora fissa in una forma canonica l'identificazione degli autori, l'attribuzione delle opere, la delimitazione dei testi, la numerazione di porzioni testuali come paragrafi e versi. Ne scaturisce un dilemma: da una parte, l'interoperabilità richiede che gli URI CTS siano basati su un canone testuale fisso, il che tende ad ostacolare le modifiche al canone da parte dei filologi; d'altra parte, i principi della filologia suggeriscono che gli URI puntino a versioni specifiche dei testi, il che però riduce il potenziale di interoperabilità del protocollo.

This paper will model data into Meta-Tonic Design by a method which examines and locates meta-immersion. The data will be drawn from the films ​ Blade Runner 2049 (dir:Villeneuve, 2017), ​ Hard to be a God ​ (dir:German, 2013), ​ The Turin Horse (dir:Tarr, 2011) and the ​ The Deserted ​ (dir:Ming-liang, 2017) by considering the state of each artefact and how these elements behave in the presence of a formula prescribed through calculations made from specific indicators and additives.

This paper is the first of two that seek to propose the establishment of a new singularity for the arts defined as a Post-neomodernism by examining the first five points of the ​ 'Post Neomodernist Manifesto' (2015). As the micro movements of Post-postmodernism, Neomodernism, and Metamodernism have established their own positions in an after Postmodernist context, therein lies an absence of a greater contextualisation to which a Post-neomodernism can establish and by this, approach a singularity in more holistic terms. Discussion will examine the context of a new absolute, the role of multiplicity in new relativism, the rise of post truth and the disruption of such instances through digital media.

In order to understand the Universe completely and achieve Theory of Everything we must understand how our consciousness experiences and understands all objects in the Universe in general. The aim of the project is to synthesize philosophy, mathematics, physics, information theory, language and cognitive science into a single architectonic framework or system of our reason itself and to model the original synthetic unity of apperception -the framework within which all our thoughts, knowledge and experience is produced.

This paper explores the nature of alternative zombie characterisation through contemporary mainstream cinema. As Hegel laments that madness is 'a derangement of a person's individual world' (Hegel, 408 Z), 'an attempt at self empowerment where the power of the divine is experienced as either absent or irrational' (Berthold­Bond, p.152) this kind of consideration is amongst a misguided if not misinterpreted reasoning nested within cinema that portrays zombies as blundering, blood­thirsty monsters instead of what Hegel further considers to be 'a religious disillusionment' (ibid.). This paper will challenge the archetypal limitations of screen zombie characterisation by presenting test cases of the films ​ Shaun of the Dead (dir. Wright, 2004), ​ Zombieland (dir. Fleischer, 2009), ​ World War Z (dir. Forster, 2013), and ​ 28 Weeks Later (dir. Fresnadillo, 2007) into the philosophical frameworks of Hegel's notion of madness, Socrates notion of morality, and Nietzsche's will to power. The intent of such is not to provide a critique of these three perspectives but rather in reverse, to establish a model by way of deconstructing the aforementioned films through a means that plays out a deeper understanding through characterisation of the genre and the limitedness of determinism in recent zombie-­based cinema.

Since this paper (extended abstract) is rejected by anonymous reviewers, this is its final version. I apologize for its rough and unfinished form, but this author cannot continue this work. If you are curious what Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory and David Deutsch’s Universal Constructor looks like, read it anyway. Feel free to use it in parts or entirety for your paper if you are in the mood to do that. Not a single word on the topic will be added by Aleksandar Malečić. Have a nice day.

Kant's transcendental philosophy is used to answer the questions about the nature of mathematics, how mathematics relates to the physical world, why we are self-aware and perceive ourselves in the world described by mathematics. Kant's architectonic system of reason is used to derive the invariant framework of the mind within which our thoughts originate - the original synthetic unity of apperception. It is the logical framework underlying all our possible knowledge - the framework of the cognitive faculty of understanding. This framework lies at the foundation of our thinking, logic, mathematics, natural language and organization of sense-data (experience). Phenomenal world in space and time is an output of this framework after the synthesis of the productive imagination. The nature of mathematics is discussed as based on this framework from intuitionist and logicist perspectives. Logic defines the structure of space and time.