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This fine collection of essays by a leading philosopher of science presents a defence of integrative pluralism as the best description for thecomplexity of scientific inquiry today. The tendency of some scientists to unify science by reducing all theories to a few fundamental laws of the most basic particles that populate our universe is ill-suited to the biological sciences, which study multi-component, multi-level, evolved complex systems. This integrative pluralism is the most efficient way to understand the different and (...) complex processes - historical and interactive - that generate biological phenomena. This book will be of interest to students and professionals in the philosophy of science. (shrink)

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The world is complex, but acknowledging itscomplexity requires an appreciation for the many roles context plays in shaping natural phenomena. In _Unsimple Truths, _Sandra Mitchell argues that the long-standing scientific and philosophical deference to reductive explanations founded on simple universal laws, linear causal models, and predict-and-act strategies fails to accommodate the kinds of knowledge that many contemporary sciences are providing about the world. She advocates, instead, for a new understanding that represents the rich, variegated, interdependent fabric of many (...) levels and kinds of explanation that are integrated with one another to ground effective prediction and action. Mitchell draws from diverse fields including psychiatry, social insect biology, and studies of climate change to defend “integrative pluralism”—a theory of scientific practices that makes sense of how many natural and social sciences represent the multi-level, multi-component, dynamic structures they study. She explains how we must, in light of the now-acknowledgedcomplexity and contingency of biological and social systems, revise how we conceptualize the world, how we investigate the world, and how we act in the world. Ultimately _Unsimple Truths _argues that the very idea of what should count as legitimate science itself should change. (shrink)

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"_The Moment of Complexity_ is a profoundly original work. In remarkable and insightful ways, Mark Taylor traces an entirely new way to view the evolution of our culture, detailing how information theory and the scientific concept ofcomplexity can be used to understand recent developments in the arts and humanities. This book will ultimately be seen as a classic."-John L. Casti, Santa Fe Institute, author of _Gödel: A Life of Logic, the Mind, and Mathematics_ The science ofcomplexity (...) accounts for that inscrutable mix of chaos and order that governs our natural world.Complexity explains how networks emerge and function, how species organize into ecosystems, how stars form into galaxies, and how just a few sequences of DNA can account for so many different life forms. Recently, the idea ofcomplexity has taken the worlds of business and politics by storm. The concept is used to account for phenomena as varied as the behavior of the stock market, the response of voting populations, and the effects of risk management. Even Disney has usedcomplexity theory to manage crowd control at its theme parks. Given the startling development of new information technologies, we now live in a moment of unprecedentedcomplexity, an era in which change occurs faster than our ability to comprehend it. With _The Moment of Complexity_, Mark C. Taylor offers a timely map for this unfamiliar terrain opening in our midst, unfolding an original philosophy through a remarkable synthesis of science and culture. According to Taylor,complexity is not just a breakthrough scientific concept, but the defining quality of the post-Cold War era. The flux of digital currents swirling around us, he argues, has created a new network culture with its own distinctive logic and dynamic. Drawing on resources from information theory and evolutionary biology, Taylor explains the operation of complex adaptive systems in social and cultural processes and captures a whole new zeitgeist in the making. To appreciate the significance of our emerging network culture, he claims, we need not only to understand contemporary scientific and technological transformations, but also to explore the subtle influences of art, architecture, philosophy, religion, and higher education. _The Moment of Complexity_, then, is a remarkable work of cultural analysis on a scale rarely seen today. To follow its trajectory is to learn how we arrived at this critical moment in our culture, and to know where we might head in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

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This article introduces and defends the “pathologicalcomplexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having (...) to deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathologicalcomplexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computationalcomplexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals. (shrink)

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This article aims to study the intersection between critical realism andcomplexity theories through the existing literature on complex systems via an engagement with Luhmann’s autopoiesis. With reference to the philosophies of substance and persistence, I build on previous critical realist scholarship and provide an explanation for what the literature has only noted as the limitations and potentials of autopoiesis for complex systems thinking and its compatibility with Critical Realism. By highlighting how Luhmann’s autopoiesis is not a trans-immanent/ perdurantist-exdurantist (...) system, I show first how a trans immanent system through the method of calibration entails a complex causation involving objects in the environment of systems and not just within their boundaries. Second, I explain how a trans-immanent system fits with CR via the Morphogenetic Régulation framework by exploring the theme of crisis in terms of the movement from inadequate to adequate understanding of objects. (shrink)

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This is a review article of Paul Cillier's 1999 book _Complexity and Postmodernism_. The review article is generally encouraging and constructive, although isolates a number of areas in need of clarification or development in Cillier's work. The volume of the _South African Journal of Philosophy_ in which the review article appeared also printed a response by Cilliers.

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The idea that consciousness andcomplexity are closely related has been a major driver of the popularity of integrated information theory of consciousness, despite its major formal, phenomenological, and neuroscientific shortcomings. Here, I argue that we can recover this intuition by replacing its biologically neutral notion ofcomplexity with an evolutionary one that I shall dub “pathologicalcomplexity.”.

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Ambitiously identifying fresh issues in the study of complex systems, Peter J. Taylor, in a model of interdisciplinary exploration, makes these concerns accessible to scholars in the fields of ecology, environmental science, and science studies. UnrulyComplexity explores concepts used to deal withcomplexity in three realms: ecology and socio-environmental change; the collective constitution of knowledge; and the interpretations of science as they influence subsequent research. For each realm Taylor shows that unrulycomplexity-situations that lack definite boundaries, (...) where what goes on "outside" continually restructures what is "inside," and where diverse processes come together to produce change-should not be suppressed by partitioningcomplexity into well-bounded systems that can be studied or managed from an outside vantage point. Using case studies from Australia, North America, and Africa, he encourages readers to be troubled by conventional boundaries-especially between science and the interpretation of science-and to reflect more self-consciously on the conceptual and practical choices researchers make. (shrink)

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Many scholars have conducted in-depth research on the evaluation and prediction of scholars’ scientific impact and meanwhile discovered various factors that affect the success of scholars. Among all these relevant factors, scholars’ ages have been universally acknowledged as one of the most important factors for it can shed light on many practical issues, e.g., finding supervisors, discovering rising stars, and research funding or award applications. However, due to the inaccessibility or the privacy issues of acquiring scholars’ personal data, there is (...) little research to explore the true ages of scholars currently. Alternatively, scholars’ publications’ information can be obtained through various digital libraries. Inspired by this fact, we propose a novel scholar’s age prediction method based on their articles’ information. Our method first classifies factors that affect scholars’ ages into intuitive and complex types according to their computationalcomplexity and then apply machine learning algorithms to predict the ages of scholars based on these factors. The experimental results on the real dataset demonstrate that our method can effectively predict the true ages of scholars. Given that there is no completely accurate dataset because of the continuous publication of academic papers, we then apply our method on the incomplete dataset. Nevertheless, our method still has high prediction accuracy in such situations. (shrink)

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The paper presents evidence in bacteria for the utility of Godfrey-Smith’s environmentalcomplexity thesis, using certain kinds of signal transduction systems as proxies for cognitive/behavioralcomplexity. Microbiologists already accept that the number of signal transduction proteins in a bacterial genome indicates the level of ecologicalcomplexity to which the organism is subject: the more signalling proteins, the greater thecomplexity. Sheer numbers are not always a reliable indicator of behavioralcomplexity, however. The paper proposes a (...) new, ECT-based procedure for identifying, from genomic sequence and signalling repertoire, novel bacterial candidates likely to exhibit behavioralcomplexity in response to a complex ecological niche. (shrink)

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The theory of nonlinear complex systems has become a successful and widely used problem-solving approach in the natural sciences - from laser physics, quantum chaos and meteorology to molecular modeling in chemistry and computer simulations of cell growth in biology. In recent times it has been recognized that many of the social, ecological and political problems of mankind are also of a global, complex and nonlinear nature. And one of the most exciting topics of present scientific and public interest is (...) the idea that even the human mind is governed largely by the nonlinear dynamics of complex systems. In this wide-ranging but concise treatment Prof. Mainzer discusses, in nontechnical language, the common framework behind these endeavours. Special emphasis is given to the evolution of new structures in natural and cultural systems and it is seen clearly how the new integrative approach ofcomplexity theory can give new insights that were not available using traditional reductionistic methods. (shrink)

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The concept of disease has been the subject ofa vast, vivid and versatile debate. Categoriessuch as ``realist'', ``nominalist'', ``ontologist'',``physiologist'', ``normativist'' and``descriptivist'' have been applied to classifydisease concepts. These categories refer tounderlying theoretical frameworks of thedebate. The objective of this review is toanalyse these frameworks. It is argued that thecategories applied in the debate refer toprofound philosophical issues, and that thecomplexity of the debate reflects thecomplexity of the concept itself: disease is acomplex concept, and does not easily lenditself to definition.

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In their simplest form, hybrid languages are propositional modal languages which can refer to states. They were introduced by Arthur Prior, the inventor of tense logic, and played an important role in his work: because they make reference to specific times possible, they remove the most serious obstacle to developing modal approaches to temporal representation and reasoning. However very little is known about the computationalcomplexity of hybrid temporal logics.In this paper we analyze thecomplexity of the satisfiability (...) problem of a number of hybrid temporal logics: the basic hybrid language over transitive trees; nominal Until logic; and referential interval logic. We discuss the effects of including nominals, the @ operator, the somewhere modality E, and the difference operator D. Adding nominals to tense logic leads for several frame-classes to an increase incomplexity of the satisfiability problem from PSPACE to EXPTIME. On transitive trees, however, the satisfiability problem for this language can be decided in PSPACE. Along the way we make a detour through hybrid propositional dynamic logic: we establish upper bounds for a number of temporal logics by generalizing results due to Passy and Tinchev [29] and De Giacomo [16]. We conclude with some remarks on the relevance of our results to description logic, and draw attention to the utility of the spypoint technique for proving upper and lower bounds. (shrink)

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Multinational corporations are operating in complex business environments. They are confronted with contradictory institutional demands that often represent mutually incompatible expectations of various audiences. Managing these demands poses new organizational challenges for the corporation. Conducting an empirical case study at the sportswear manufacturer Puma, we explore how multinational corporations respond to institutionalcomplexity and what legitimacy strategies they employ to maintain their license to operate. We draw on the literature on institutional theory, contingency theory, and organizational paradoxes. The results (...) of our qualitative longitudinal study show that managing corporate legitimacy is a dynamic process in which corporations adapt organizational capacities, structures, and procedures. (shrink)

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Systems change requires complex interventions. Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) face the daunting task of addressing complex societal problems by aligning different backgrounds, values, ideas and resources. A major challenge for CSPs is how to link the type of partnership to the intervention needed to drive change. Intervention strategies are thereby increasingly based on Theories of Change (ToCs). Applying ToCs is often a donor requirement, but it also reflects the ambition of a partnership to enhance its transformative potential. The current use of (...) ToCs in partnering efforts varies greatly. There is a tendency for a linear and relatively simple use of ToCs that does limited justice to thecomplexity of the problems partnerships aim to address. Since partnership dynamics are already complex and challenging themselves, confusion and disagreement over the appropriate application of ToCs is likely to hamper rather than enhance the transformative potential of partnerships. We develop acomplexity alignment framework and a diagnostic tool that enables partnerships to better appreciate thecomplexity of the context in which they operate, allowing them to adjust their learning strategy. This paper applies recent insights into how to deal withcomplexity from both the evaluation and theory of change fields to studies investigating the transformative capacity of partnerships. This can (1) serve as a check to define the challenges of partnering projects and (2) can help delineate the societal sources and layers ofcomplexity that cross-sector partnerships deal with such as failure, insufficient responsibility taking and collective action problems at four phases of partnering. (shrink)

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In computationalcomplexity theory, decision problems are divided intocomplexity 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 thecomplexity 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 computationalcomplexity theory is descriptivecomplexity, which connects the expressive strength of systems of logic with the computationalcomplexity classes. In descriptivecomplexity 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 computationalcomplexity classes in cognitive modelling. Placing my account in the recent literature on the topic, I argue that the problem can be solved by considering computationalcomplexity for humanly relevant problem solving algorithms and input sizes. (shrink)

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Modern integrative systems biology defines itself by thecomplexity of the problems it takes on through computational modeling and simulation. However in integrative systems biology computers do not solve problems alone. Problem solving depends as ever on human cognitive resources. Current philosophical accounts hint at their importance, but it remains to be understood what roles human cognition plays in computational modeling. In this paper we focus on practices through which modelers in systems biology use computational simulation and other tools (...) to handle the cognitivecomplexity of their modeling problems so as to be able to make significant contributions to understanding, intervening in, and controlling complex biological systems. We thus show how cognition, especially processes of simulative mental modeling, is implicated centrally in processes of model-building. At the same time we suggest how the representational choices of what to model in systems biology are limited or constrained as a result. Such constraints help us both understand and rationalize the restricted form that problem solving takes in the field and why its results do not always measure up to expectations. (shrink)

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I look back at my 1996 bookComplexity and the Function of Mind in Nature, responding to papers by Pamela Lyon, Fred Keijzer and Argyris Arnellos, and Matt Grove.

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Cognition can often be modeled as the transformation of a set of variables into another. At least two kinds of entities are needed in this process: signals and coders. Representations are usually taken to be signals, but sometimes they are the coders: sometimes the computationalcomplexity of variable transformations can be strikingly reduced by relying on a structure that mirrors that of some task-relevant entity. These kinds of coders are what philosophers call structural representations.

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In modern, Western societies the purpose of schooling is to ensure that school-goers acquire knowledge of pre-existing practices, events, entities and so on. The knowledge that is learned is then tested to see if the learner has acquired a correct or adequate understanding of it. For this reason, it can be argued that schooling is organised around a representational epistemology: one which holds that knowledge is an accurate representation of something that is separate from knowledge itself. Since the object of (...) knowledge is assumed to exist separately from the knowledge itself, this epistemology can also be considered ‘spatial.’ In this paper we show how ideas fromcomplexity have challenged the spatial epistemology’ of representation and we explore possibilities for an alternative ‘temporal’ understanding of knowledge in its relationship to reality. In addition tocomplexity, our alternative takes its inspiration from Deweyan ‘transactional realism’ and deconstruction. We suggest that ‘knowledge’ and ‘reality’ should not be understood as separate systems which somehow have to be brought into alignment with each other, but that they are part of the same emerging complex system which is never fully ‘present’ in any (discrete) moment in time. This not only introduces the notion of time into our understanding of the relationship between knowledge and reality, but also points to the importance of acknowledging the role of the ‘unrepresentable’ or ‘incalculable’. With this understanding knowledge reaches us not as something we receive but as a response, which brings forth new worlds because it necessarily adds something (which was not present anywhere before it appeared) to what came before. This understanding of knowledge suggests that the acquisition of curricular content should not be considered an end in itself. Rather, curricular content should be used to bring forth that which is incalculable from the perspective of the present. The epistemology of emergence therefore calls for a switch in focus for curricular thinking, away from questions about presentation and representation and towards questions about engagement and response. (shrink)

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We prove that the sets of standard tautologies of predicate Product Logic and of predicate Basic Logic, as well as the set of standard-satisfiable formulas of predicate Basic Logic are not arithmetical, thus finding a rather satisfactory solution to three problems proposed by Hájek in [H01].

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The main claim of this paper is that notions of implementation based on an isomorphic correspondence between physical and computational states are not tenable. Rather, ``implementation'' has to be based on the notion of ``bisimulation'' in order to be able to block unwanted implementation results and incorporate intuitions from computational practice. A formal definition of implementation is suggested, which satisfies theoretical and practical requirements and may also be used to make the functionalist notion of ``physical realization'' precise. The upshot of (...) this new definition of implementation is that implementation cannot distinguish isomorphic bisimilar from non-isomporphic bisimilar systems anymore, thus driving a wedge between the notions of causal and computationalcomplexity. While computationalism does not seem to be affected by this result, the consequences for functionalism are not clear and need further investigations. (shrink)

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The paper explores the topic of organizational routines from a philosophical vantage point to see how the philosophy of action may help improve its understanding in organizational research. The main goal is to show the distinctivecomplexity of the intentional picture of routines. In this respect, the paper clarifies the interrelations between psychological habits and routines and describes similarities and differences between them. It also highlights the special place of mindfulness as a psycho-cognitive mechanism of action meta-control in intentional (...) explanations of routinecomplexity. (shrink)

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Resumen: Este artículo plantea la tesis que la complejidad humana es directamente proporcional a la consideración y estudio de múltiples temporalidades, todas las cuales tienen una base común la biología. Esta tesis se articula en dos argumentos. El primero sostiene que la complejidad en general es el tiempo mismo, lo cual significa directa e inmediatamente que el tiempo no es simplemente una variable. El segundo afirma la necesidad y la importancia de una epistemología del tiempo. Este segundo argumento emerge como (...) una subtesis, relativamente a la tesis principal. Al final se concluyen dos cosas: a) que la base material de la ciencia no es hoy ya la física, sino la biología; sin embargo, biología y cultura constituyen una sólida unidad, algo que es evidente gracias a la epigenética; b) que los actos humanos pueden explicarse a partir de temporalidades diferentes anteriores al segundo, las cuales se proyectan a escalas más amplias y densas. Las ciencias sociales y humanas pueden enriquecerse enormemente a partir de un cuadro semejante.: This paper claims that humancomplexity is directly proportional to considering and studying various times, all of which have a common ground in biology. The claim brought out entails a twofold argument. One says thatcomplexity in general is time, which means straightforwardly that time is not a sheer variable. The second argument argues about the need for and importance of an epistemology of time. The latter argument emerges a second claim vis-à-vis the main one. At the end two clear cut conclusions are drawn, thus: a) the material ground for science is nowadays not physics any more but biology; however, biology and culture make a solid unity, something that is made evident thanks to epigenetics; b) human actions can be explained by virtue of different times prior to a second, all of which are projected onto larger and more dense time scales. The human and social sciences can benefit enormously from such a depicted frame. (shrink)

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A short review ofcomplexity research from the perspective of history and philosophy of biology is presented.Complexity and its emergence has scientific and metaphysical meanings. From its beginning, biology was a science of complex systems, but with the advent of electronic computing and the possibility of simulating mathematical models of complicated systems, new intuitions ofcomplexity emerged, together with attempts to devise quantitative measures ofcomplexity. But can we quantify the complex?

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In this article, I will discuss possible differences between ecosystems and organisms on the basis of their intrinsiccomplexity. As the concept ofcomplexity still remains highly debated, I propose here a practical and original way to measure thecomplexity of an ecosystem or an organism. For this purpose, I suggest using the concept of logical depth (LD) in a specific manner, in order to take into account the difficulty as well as the time needed to generate (...) the studied object. I illustrate this method with fully controlled Daisyworld simulations (i.e., simulations based on the Gaia hypothesis) that have often been proposed to mimic living systems. The method consists of the following sequential stages: (1) identification of the shortest program able to numerically model the studied system (also called the Kolmogorov–Solomonoffcomplexity); (2) running the program, once if there are no stochastic components in the system, several times if stochastic components are there; and (3) computing the time needed to generate the system with LDcomplexity. This measure is supposed to estimate the systemcomplexity. It appears in this study that LD estimations fit well with the intuition we have of complex systems, with higher complexities being found for more realistic Daisyworlds. With such a method of capturing the time needed to build a system, we expect to detect in future studies any quantified differences between complex ecosystems and organisms. (shrink)

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Over the past decades, the modernization of agriculture in the Western world has contributed not only to a rapid increase in food production but also to environmental and societal concerns over issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, soil quality and biodiversity loss. Many of these concerns, for example those related to animal welfare or labor conditions, are stuck in controversies and apparently deadlocked debates. As a result we observe a paradox in which a wide range of corporate social responsibility initiatives, (...) originally seeking to reconnect agriculture and society, frequently provoke debate, conflict, and protests. In order to make sense of this pattern, the present paper contends that Western agriculture is marked by moralcomplexity, i.e., the tendency of multiple legitimate moral standpoints to proliferate without the realistic prospect of a consensus. This contention is buttressed by a conceptual framework that draws inspiration the contemporary business ethics and systems-theoretic scholarship. From the systems-theoretic point of view, the evolution of moralcomplexity is traced back to the processes of agricultural modernization, specialization, and differentiation, each of which suppresses the responsiveness of the economic and legal institutions to the full range of societal and environmental concerns about agriculture. From the business ethics point of view, moralcomplexity is shown to prevent the transformation of the ethical responsibilities into the legal and economic responsibilities despite the ongoing institutionalization of CSR. Navigating moralcomplexity is shown to require moral judgments which are necessarily personal and contestable. These judgments are implicated in those CSR initiatives that require dealing with trade-offs among the different sustainability issues. (shrink)

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Veit’s central claims are, first, that the function of valenced consciousness is to deal with pathologicalcomplexity, and, second, that pathologicalcomplexity is a trade-off problem associated with maximizing fitness. I argue that Veit’s hints about what pathologicalcomplexity amounts to pull in conflicting directions, and that the specific contribution of consciousness to dealing with a computational problem is under-motivated.

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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 thecomplexity of the task of solving a problem can be characterized by the computationalcomplexity 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)

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This paper investigates how social enterprises navigate through the ethicalcomplexity of social change and extends the ethical quandaries faced by social enterprises beyond organisational boundaries. Building on the emerging literature on the ethics of SEs, I conceptualise ethics as an engagement with power relations. I develop theoretical arguments to understand the interaction between ethical predispositions of a SE and the normative structure of the social system in which it operates. I applied this conceptualisation in a hierarchical and heterogeneous (...) rural Indian context to provide insights into the moral ambiguity of ethical decision-making and suggest pathways for ethical actions. Taking a qualitative case study approach, I followed an exemplary SE’s implementation process in India. I observed ethical challenges in designing the implementation process, selecting the beneficiaries and sustaining the programme. I also identified three actions of the SE—the action of recognition, the action of reposition and the action of collaboration—and developed a transformative process model. I discuss the theoretical implications of this research for SEs and recommend a critical engagement with ethical theories to address systemic problems. (shrink)

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We live in a world in which every aspect of our existence is influenced by inordinate amounts ofcomplexity. TechnicalComplexity, for example, is not necessarily the same as EconomicComplexity although the two are related. Similarly, Public Health and SocialComplexity are different as well. Nonetheless, one thing above all is a prominent feature of today's world; all the various types and forms ofcomplexity are not only related, but deeply intertwined. Today, an idea (...) can travel the globe in mere seconds thanks to the internet and social media! These factors make our world today so complex and extremely different from previous ages in history. (shrink)

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