"The aim of the present paper is to situate the recent attempts to study the phenomena of knowledge management in a larger epistemological context. More precisely, I intend to look at it from the perspective of the philosophy of the humanities. This involves understanding it as an endeavor concerned with the search for regularities. As a result, key notions figuring in the repertoire of this kind of undertaking, primarily those of notes and notebooks, are scrutinized for the purpose of revealing (...) their theoretical function. This points towards some ontological issues, such as the idea of taking notes as cultural kinds, namely something analogous to the idea of natural kinds. Keywords: notes, notebooks, cultural kind, cultural artefact, pattern, commonplace-book". (shrink)

This paper introduces and discusses three models of future: a determinist model, a stochastic model, and the model of True Prophetic Knowledge. All three models coexist in natural languages and are represented both in their grammatical systems and in the text-building discourse strategies speakers and authors apply to.

This paper explores the hypothesis that proper names serve as anchors identifying the individuals in the possible or real world. This hypothesis is tested on Old Icelandic narratives. A prominent feature of Old Icelandic sagas is that the narrative matter is not quite new. A Saga is reliable iff it refers to the events relevant for its audience and accepted as true by the whole community. I argue that proper names must be regarded as references to the background knowledge of (...) the medieval audience. I follow two contemporary Sagas based on the fresh events and show that proper names in a Saga mind were arranged in form of a database, each type of a personal designation having its charachteristic text-building profile. The form of the name and its frequency in the Saga are linked with the rank of the character. The high number of people mentioned in the Sagas is explained by the fact that the Sagas aimed at describing the real world, where the names of the individuals and the events they were involved cross-identified each other. Every character had its rigid identifiers. The total amount of propria is always higher than the number of active figures. I classify the Saga characters into five ranks and discuss their information-structural profiles. (shrink)

In contrast to the theories of relativity, quantum mechanics is not yet based on a generally accepted conceptual foundation. It is proposed here that the missing principle may be identified through the observation that all knowledge in physics has to be expressed in propositions and that therefore the most elementary system represents the truth value of one proposition, i.e., it carries just one bit of information. Therefore an elementary system can only give a definite result in one specific measurement. The (...) irreducible randomness in other measurements is then a necessary consequence. For composite systems entanglement results if all possible information is exhausted in specifying joint properties of the constituents. (shrink)

This collection of ten essays elucidates some of the more challenging aspects of Anscombe’s work and affirms her reputation as one of our most original ...

The article proposes to further develop the ideas of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis by including into evolutionary research an analysis of phenomena that occur above the organismal level. We demonstrate that the current Extended Synthesis is focused more on individual traits (genetically or non-genetically inherited) and less on community system traits (synergetic/organizational traits) that characterize transgenerational biological, ecological, social, and cultural systems. In this regard, we will consider various communities that are made up of interacting populations, and for which the (...) individual members can belong to the same or to different species. Examples of communities include biofilms, ant colonies, symbiotic associations resulting in holobiont formation, and human societies. The proposed model of evolution at the level of communities revises classic theorizing on the major transitions in evolution by analyzing the interplay between community/social traits and individual traits, and how this brings forth ideas of top-down regulations of bottom-up evolutionary processes (collaboration of downward and upward causation). The work demonstrates that such interplay also includes reticulate interactions and reticulate causation. In this regard, we exemplify how community systems provide various non-genetic ‘scaffoldings’, ‘constraints’, and ‘affordances’ for individual and sociocultural evolutionary development. Such research complements prevailing models that focus on the vertical transmission of heritable information, from parent to offspring, with research that instead focusses on horizontal, oblique and even reverse information transmission, going from offspring to parent. We call this reversed information transfer the ‘offspring effect’ to contrast it from the ‘parental effect’. We argue that the proposed approach to inheritance is effective for modelling cumulative and distributed developmental process and for explaining the biological origins and evolution of language. (shrink)

Agency is a power, but what is it a power to do? The tradition presents us with three main answers: (1) that agency is a power to affect one’s own will, consequent upon which act further events ensue, beginning with the movement of a part of one's body; (2) that agency is a power to affect one’s own body, consequent upon which act further events ensue, beginning with the movement of an object that one touches; and (3) that agency is (...) a power to affect that material upon which one brings one's action to bear---e.g. the apple one is peeling (with a knife in one's hand). These three answers correspond to three increasingly expansive conceptions of the province of human agency. I refer to them, respectively, as volitionalism, corporealism and materialism. Only the first two are seriously considered in contemporary action theory. Favoring the third, and hoping to sharpen the conflict between the third and the first, I criticize the second. Corporealism has been a popular position—arguably, the default position in the philosophy of action—since Donald Davidson’s classic paper “Agency” (1971). Although it seems to occupy a sensible middle ground between volitionalism and materialism, corporealism is, I argue, indefensible: it shares the vulnerabilities of both its two rivals, without possessing the strengths of either. Nevertheless, reflection on corporealism lights the road to materialism, which, in the end, is the only possible alternative to volitionalism. (shrink)

Anscombe holds that a proper account of intentional action must exhibit “a ‘form’ of description of events.” But what does that mean? To answer this question, I compare the method of Anscombe’s Intention with that of Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic—another classic work of analytic philosophy that consciously opposes itself to psychological explanations. On the one hand, positively, I aim to identify and elucidate the kind of account of intentional action that Anscombe attempts to provide. On the other hand, negatively, I (...) hope to dispel the canard that Anscombe’s opposition to the causal theory of action is a product of “behaviorism.”. (shrink)

The conclusion of practical reasoning is commonly said to rest upon a diverse pair of representations—a “major” and a “minor” premise—the first of which concerns the end and the second, the means. Modern and contemporary philosophers writing on action and practical reasoning tend to portray the minor premise as a “means-end belief”—a belief about, as Michael Smith puts it, “the ways in which one thing leads to another,” or, as John McDowell puts it, “what can be relied on to bring (...) about what.” On this point there is little difference between followers of Davidson and followers of Anscombe, or between those who invoke Hume’s legacy and those who invoke Aristotle’s. But Aristotle himself held a very different position. According to him, the minor premise concerns particulars, a sphere controlled by perception. The perception of particulars—that is, of the really-existing people and things confronted in the field of action—plays no essential role in the modern account of rational agency. Because it does not, the modern account fails to explain how one could act for a reason, or how practical reasoning could deliver any conclusion. (shrink)

When an agent intentionally changes something separate from herself—when, say, she opens a bottle—what is the relation between what the agent does and what the patient suffers? This paper defends the Aristotelian thesis that action is to passion as the road from Thebes to Athens is to the road from Athens to Thebes: they are two aspects of a single material reality. Philosophers of action tend to think otherwise. It is generally taken for granted that intentional transactions must be analyzed (...) in terms of a causal relation. Controversy surrounds the question what the causal relata are: event-causalists claim that both of the relata are events; agent-causalists claim that the first relatum is an agent, and they dispute among themselves whether the second is an event or a terminal state of the patient. But the entire controversy assumes the necessity of some causal analysis of transactions. This paper argues that, far from being necessary, no such analysis is even possible. (shrink)

The debate concerning the legitimacy of awarding reparations for historical injustices focuses on the issue of finding a proper moral justification for granting reparations to the descendants of the victims of injustices which took place in the remote past. Regarding the case of Romanian communism as a more recent injustice, and analyzing the moral problems entailed by this historical lapse, within this paper I argue that overcoming such a legacy cannot be carried out, as in the case of historical injustices (...) situated more remotely in time, through the means of selective reparations, such as restitutions or compensations. For, even though they are justified from the perspective of rectificatory justice, selective reparations do not fulfill the requirements of social justice. Rather, I argue that the fall of the Romanian communist regime should have been followed by an equal distribution of all properties illegitimately seized by the state, to all adult Romanian citizens at that time, in order to attain the imperative of equal distribution of property among all citizens. The equal distribution thesis is the only way through which the Romanian society could have complied, at that moment of political and social renewal, with the requirements of justice. I also aim at explaining why other principles of justice, which either have or could have been implemented, cannot be properly justified. Finally, I analyze two main objections which could be invoked against my thesis, namely the economic efficiency objection and the legal realist objection. (shrink)

For as long as there has been anything called “the philosophy of action,” its practitioners have accounted for action in terms of an associated kind of explanation. The alternative to this approach was noticed, but not adopted, by G. E. M. Anscombe. Anscombe observed that a series of answers to the reason-requesting question “Why?” may be read in reverse order as a series of answers to the question “How?” Unlike answers to the question “Why?”, answers to the question “How?” are (...) not explanatory of what they are about: they reveal, not reasons for doing something, but ways of doing something, and they have the form of what Aristotle called a practical syllogism. The alternative to theorizing action in terms of explanation, is, thus, to theorize it in terms calculation. In exploring this alternative, I argue for three main theses: first, that (pace Anscombe) it is not a matter of indifference whether we theorize action in terms of the question “Why?” or in terms of the question “How?”; second, that the question “Why?” is a question for an observer of action (the agent already knows the answer and can learn nothing from the inquiry), whereas the question “How?” is a question for the agent—and moreover, one that the agent must answer in order to achieve any end whatsoever—so that part of what is at stake is the standpoint from which action is to be theorized; and finally, that the standpoint of the agent, revealed by the question “How?”, is prior to that of an observer. (shrink)

Excerpt from Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie Uber den Begriff und die Aufgaben der Sprachphilosophie und allgemeinen Grammatik und ihr Verhältnis zur Psychologie. Erstes Kapitel. Begriff der Sprache und der Sprachphilosophie. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in (...) the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

A fluent economical collaboration between countries is a major need. European flows of trade and people are supported by efficient connections between main localities from a geographic region, in many cases overriding national borders. This paper introduces three traveling salesmen problem instances based on freely available geographic coordinates of the main cities of France, Portugal and Spain. These instances are unified, generating other four larger instances: three with all pairs of countries and one instance with the settlements from all the (...) three countries. The study includes an analysis of quality of solutions for a version of branch & cut algorithm and some hybrid heuristics including the Lin–Kernighan algorithm. $Bor\mathring{u}vka$, Quick$Bor\mathring{u}vka$ and Greedy algorithms are also used in the hybrid approaches in order to obtain a potential beneficent initial solution for the Lin–Kernighan algorithm. Concorde solver, nowadays state-of-the-art exact software, together with the already mentioned algorithms, is used to test and furthermore analyze the new TSP instances. Some results are represented using online services such as Google Maps, showing the potential integration of the Concorde’s optimum results into commercial routing applications. The very good results provided by the Lin–Kernighan method allow its usage for real medium-sized routing instances. (shrink)

Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God. The Global Rise of Religious Violence University of California Press, Berkeley & L.A., 2001, 320 p.

Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc. Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, The Free Press, New York, 2001, 300 p.

Sorin Adam Matei, Boierii mintii. Intelectualii romani intre grupurile de prestigiu si piata libera a ideilor Ed. Compania, Bucuresti, 2004.

Meeting the security requests in transportation is nowadays a must. The intelligent transport systems represent the support for addressing such a challenge, due to their ability to make real-time adaptive decisions. We propose a new variant of the travelling salesman problem integrating security constraints inspired from ITSs. This optimization problem is called the secure TSP and considers a set of security constraints on its integer variables. Similarities with fuzzy logic are presented alongside the mathematical model of the introduced TSP variant.

This is a wide ranging and deeply learned examination of evolutionary developmental biology, and the foundations of life from the perspective of information theory. Hermeneutics was a method developed in the humanities to achieve understanding, in a given context, of texts, history, and artwork. In Readers of the Book of Life, the author shows that living beings are also hermeneutical interpreters of genetics texts saved in DNA; an interpretation based on the past experience of the cell (cell lineage, species), confronted (...) with and incorporating present environmental clues. This approach stresses the history, not only of the digital record saved in the DNA, but also of the flesh - the cellular organization which has a direct time-continuity with the very origins of life. This book is aimed at reconciling two opposite approaches to life. The first strictly sticking to a belief that all phenomena observed in the realm of the living can be explained from laws of physics. The opposite stressing the importance of features characteristic for a given level of description. To bring both views into a common understanding, the first part gives a comparison of the two problem solving strategies. The second part surveys the development of 20th century biology, bringing to light branches that never became part of the research mainstream. The third section of the book reviews a large body of recent evidence that can be interpreted in favor of the hermeneutic arguments. (shrink)

To determine what the speaker in a cooperative dialog meant with his assertion, on top of what he explicitly said, it is crucial that we assume that the assertion he gave was optimal. In determining optimal assertions we assume that dialogs are embedded in decision problems (van Rooij 2003) and use backwards induction for calculating them (Benz 2006). In this paper, we show that in terms of our framework we can account for several types of implicatures in a uniform way, (...) suggesting that there is no need for an independent linguistic theory of generalized implicatures. In the final section, we show how we can embed our theory in the framework of signaling games, and how it relates with other game theoretic analyses of implicatures. (shrink)

Antologia revistei Philobiblon editata in 2011.

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 2, Page 778-792, June 2022.

In this article, I discuss the specific ways in which Hegel's account of life and organisms advances upon Kant's account of natural purposes in the third Critique. First of all, I argue that it is essential for Hegel's account that it contains two levels. The first level is that of logical life, the discussion of which does not depend on any empirical knowledge of natural organisms. I provide my reconstruction of this logical account of life that answers to the objection (...) made by a number of Hegel scholars to the effect that Hegel does in fact rely on empirical knowledge at this place in the logic. The second level is that of natural organisms themselves. I argue that it is with the help of this separation of the logical and natural levels, as well as his doctrine of the impotence of nature, that Hegel, unlike Kant, (a) is able to claim that not everything in natural organisms is purposive, and (b) provide a philosophical, and not merely empirical, account of the distinction between plants and animals. In both of these respects, Hegel's position can be seen as a welcome advance over Kant. (shrink)

Scientific communication takes place at two registers: first, interactions with colleagues in close proximity—members of a network, school of thought or circle; second, depersonalised transactions among a potentially unlimited number of scholars can be involved (e.g., author and readers). The interference between the two registers in the process of peer review produces a drift toward conflict of interest. Three particular cases of peer review are differentiated: journal submissions, grant applications and applications for tenure. The current conflict of interest policies do (...) not cover all these areas. Furthermore, they have a number of flaws, which involves an excessive reliance on scholars’ personal integrity. Conflicts of interest could be managed more efficiently if several elements and rules of the judicial process were accepted in science. The analysis relies on both primary and secondary data with a particular focus on Canada. (shrink)

This paper discusses the impact of East Asian philosophical ideas on the origins and development of martial arts. The article argues that the ideas of Daoist philosophy were developed into ‘soft styles’ or ‘internal schools’ that are based on the doctrine of ‘wuwei’ (action through non-action, effortless action) which follows the path of Yin. These styles are in opposition to ‘external’ or ‘hard styles’ of martial arts that follow the path of Yang. Daoist philosophy of ‘ziran’ (naturalness, spontaneity) influenced ‘animal’ (...) or ‘imitation styles’ and the paradigm of natural, unplanned, and unforced combat movements. The influence of Buddhism on martial arts is found in techniques of mental tranquillity training for the extreme conditions of combat. The work also shows the significance of Confucianism for the formation of a code of honor for warriors, which includes the ethics of duty and respect. (shrink)

In this paper, I attempt to reconstruct Schelling’s theory of organism, primarily as it is elaborated in the First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature and the Introduction to the Outline. First, I discuss the challenge that the properties of organisms presented to the dominant scientific viewpoint by the end of the eighteenth century. I present different responses to this challenge, including reductive materialism, metaphysical and heuristic vitalism, and the Kantian response, and I situate Schelling’s account of (...) organism with respect to these responses. I argue that while Schelling agrees with vitalism in that he wants to preserve the specificity of organic phenomena, he rejects principles such as vital forces or the formative drive postulated by vitalism, even for purely heuristic purposes. I argue that Schelling understands organisms fundamentally in terms of the coordinated functioning of their organs. I further clarify Schelling’s account of problematic organic phenomena by focusing on his treatment of the relation between organic activity and organic receptivity. For Schelling, organic activity and organic receptivity mutually condition each other. I provide a detailed account of how this is supposed to work. (shrink)

This paper takes a stand on Hamblin semantics and its relation to the semantics-to-pragmatics interface. Biased questions, where the speaker finds one of the options more likely and expects the confirmation that p is true, raise a concern about the limits of Hamblin semantics. I argue that biased questions have modified Hamblin semantics, while unbiased questions have unconstrained Hamblin semantics. The optional bias feature explains compositionally. It is triggered by likelihood presuppositions ranging Hamblin sets and highlighting the preferred alternative(s). Biased (...) effects are exceptionally possible in alternative and wh-questions, but only in polar questions, they can be encoded lexically and grammatically. I argue that Hamblin semantics covers all core types of questions, while some of its applications for non-questions are problematic. (shrink)

In this paper we are going to show that error coping strategies play an essential role in linguistic pragmatics. We study the effect of noisy speaker strategies within a framework of signalling games with feedback loop. We distinguish between cases in which errors occur in message selection and cases in which they occur in signal selection. The first type of errors affects the content of an utterance, and the second type its linguistic expression. The general communication model is inspired by (...) the Shannon–Weaver communication model. We test the model by a number of benchmark examples, including examples of relevance implicatures, quantity implicatures, and presupposition accommodation. (shrink)

The recent introduction of the concepts of tenderness, vulnerability, and parental care in the field of moral emotions has brought us closer to an understanding of the underlying mechanisms, but has not yet resulted in a systematic evolutionary and proximate analysis. Applying such an analysis, the present article proposes a hypothetical care mechanism that produces different motivational states or moral emotions in response to individuals perceived as vulnerable. The mechanism consists of a care system automatically triggered by vulnerability cues, a (...) system for defense and aggression, and a process of causally attributing changes in the vulnerable object’s well-being. The mechanism may also be useful in explaining moral responses in domains other than harm prevention. (shrink)

We have previously established that [Formula: see text]-comprehension is equivalent to the statement that every dilator has a well-founded Bachmann–Howard fixed point, over [Formula: see text]. In this paper, we show that the base theory can be lowered to [Formula: see text]. We also show that the minimal Bachmann–Howard fixed point of a dilator [Formula: see text] can be represented by a notation system [Formula: see text], which is computable relative to [Formula: see text]. The statement that [Formula: see text] (...) is well founded for any dilator [Formula: see text] will still be equivalent to [Formula: see text]-comprehension. Thus, the latter is split into the computable transformation [Formula: see text] and a statement about the preservation of well-foundedness, over a system of computable mathematics. (shrink)

This article presents a project of general theory of memory that embraces different types of memory: physical, biological, and social. The theory of memory presented here revises and unifies the general theory of sign systems and the theory of information, because memory processes in biological and social systems are informational processes that continuously construct and are constructed by sign systems. This article shows that memory cannot be reduced only to inherited information and material structures that “keep,” “represent,” or “carry” that (...) information ; mostly, memory is a system-defining and system-defined principle that actively reconstructs information and processes of the system on the basis of inherited information, and is thus constantly reconstructed by it. For the most part, biological and social processes do not look like memory processes, but I will argue that dynamic, evolving, and self-reproductive systems have to be memory systems, and that life, society, and cognition are embodied producers and products of memory. (shrink)

Previous research on scalar implicature has primarily relied on meta-linguistic judgment tasks and found varying rates of such inferences depending on the nature of the task and contextual manipulations. This paper introduces a novel interactive paradigm involving both a production and a comprehension side and a precise conversational goal. The main research question is what is reliably communicated by some in this communicative setting, both when the quantifier occurs in unembedded and embedded positions. Our new paradigm involves an action-based task (...) from which participants’ interpretation of utterances can be inferred. It incorporates a game-theoretic design, thereby including a precise model to predict participants’ behaviour in the experimental context. Our study shows that embedded and unembedded implicatures are reliably communicated by some. We propose two cognitive principles that describe what can be left unsaid. In our experimental context, a production strategy based on these principles is more efficient than a strategy based on literal descriptions. (shrink)

Watsuji Tetsurô is famous for having constructed a systematic socio-political ethics on the basis of the idea of emptiness. This essay examines his 1938 essay “The Concept of ‘Dharma’ and the Dialectics of Emptiness in Buddhist Philosophy” and the posthumously published The History of Buddhist Ethical Thought, in order to clarify the Buddhist roots of his ethics. It aims to answer two main questions which are fundamentally linked: “Which way does Watsuji's legacy turn: toward totalitarianism or toward a balanced theory (...) of selflessness?” and “Is Watsuji's systematic ethics Buddhist?” In order to answer these questions, this essay discusses Watsuji's view of dharma, dependent arising, and morality in Hīnayāna Buddhism. It then proceeds to Watsuji's fine-tuning of the concept of emptiness in Mādhyamika and Yogācāra Buddhism. Finally, this essay shows how Watsuji's modernist Buddhist theory connects to his own systematic ethical theory. These two theories share a focus on non-duality, negation, and emptiness. But they differ in their accounts of the relations between the individual and the community, between the “is” and the “ought,” and between hermeneutics and transcendence. These findings give us hints as to Watsuji's origins, pitfalls, and possibilities. (shrink)

This paper deals with an approach to the integration of science (with technology and economics), ethics (with religion and mysticism), the arts (aesthetics) and Nature, in order to establish a world-view based on holistic, evolutionary ethics that could help with problem solving. The author suggests that this integration is possible with the aid of “Nature’s wisdom” which is mirrored in the macroscopic pattern of the ecosphere. The corresponding eco-principles represent the basis for unifying soft and hard sciences resulting in “deep (...) sciences”. Deduction and induction will remain the methodology for deep sciences and will include conventional experiments and aesthetic and sentient experiences. Perception becomes the decisive factor with the senses as operators for the building of consciousness through the subconscious. In this paper, an attempt at integrating the concepts of the “true”, the “right” and the “beautiful” with the aid of Nature’s wisdom is explained in more detail along with consequences. (shrink)

Helen Steward holds that agency is a power to move oneself, and that it is specifically a power to move one’s body. This conception of agency is supported by a long tradition and is widely held today. It is, however, opposed to another conception of agency on which agency is a power to transact with others—with other things and with other agents. The latter conception, though scarcely represented in contemporary action theory, is no less traditional than the one that Steward (...) prefers. In this paper I argue, first, that Steward’s official purposes do not require her to privilege self-movement over other-movement, as she resolutely does; and second, that the two touchstones of truth to which she appeals throughout her book—namely, ordinary thought and natural science—both recommend a conception of agency on which it is a power whose characteristic and definitive act is a transaction. abstract. (shrink)

Cognitive archaeologists attempt to infer the cognitive and cultural features of past hominins and their societies from the material record. This task faces the problem of _minimum necessary competence_: as the most sophisticated thinking of ancient hominins may have been in domains that leave no archaeological signature, it is safest to assume that tool production and use reflects only the lower boundary of cognitive capacities. Cognitive archaeology involves selecting a model from the cognitive sciences and then assessing some aspect of (...) the material record through that lens. We give examples to show that background theoretical commitments in cognitive science that inform those models lead to different minimum necessary competence results. This raises an important question: what principles should guide us in selecting a model from the cognitive sciences? We outline two complementary responses to this question. The first involves using _independent_ lines of evidence to converge on a particular capacity. This can then influence model choice. The second is a broader suggestion. Theoretical diversity is a good thing in science, but is only beneficial over a limited amount of time. According to recent modelling work, one way of limiting diversity is to introduce extreme priors. We argue that having a broad spectrum of views in the philosophy of cognitive science may actually help cognitive archaeologists address the problem of minimum necessary competence. (shrink)

We define a type theory MLM, which has proof theoretical strength slightly greater then Rathjen's theory KPM. This is achieved by replacing the universe in Martin-Löf's Type Theory by a new universe V having the property that for every function f, mapping families of sets in V to families of sets in V, there exists a universe inside V closed under f. We show that the proof theoretical strength of MLM is $\geq \psi_{\Omega_1}\Omega_{{\rm M}+\omega}$ . This is slightly greater than (...) $|{\rm KPM}|$ , and shows that V can be considered to be a Mahlo-universe. Together with [Se96a] it follows $|{\rm MLM}|=\psi_{\Omega_1}(\Omega_{{\rm M}+\omega})$. (shrink)

This article presents a project of general theory of memory that embraces different types of memory: physical, biological, and social. The theory of memory presented here revises and unifies the general theory of sign systems and the theory of information, because memory processes in biological and social systems are informational processes that continuously (re)construct and are constructed by sign systems. This article shows that memory cannot be reduced only to inherited information and material structures that “keep,” “represent,” or “carry” that (...) information (DNA, historic manuscripts, and monuments); mostly, memory is a system-defining and system-defined principle that actively reconstructs information and processes of the system on the basis of inherited information, and is thus constantly reconstructed by it. For the most part, biological and social processes do not look like memory processes, but I will argue that dynamic, evolving, and self-reproductive systems have to be memory systems, and that life, society, and cognition are embodied producers and products of memory. (shrink)