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Anticipating and enacting worlds: moods, illness and psychobehavioral adaptation
No full textPredictive processing theorists have claimed PTSD and depression are maladaptive and epistemically distorting because they entail undesirably wide gaps between top-down models and bottom-up information inflows. Without denying this is sometimes so, the “maladaptive” label carries questionable normative assumptions. For instance, trauma survivors facing significant risk of subsequent attacks may overestimate threats to circumvent further trauma, “bringing forth” concretely safer personal spaces, to use enactive terminology, ensuring the desired gap between predicted worries and outcomes. The violation of predictive processing can go in the opposite direction too, as when depression coincides with energy-depletion, and hence objectively strenuous situations in which things look farther away because they are (accurately anticipated to be) harder to reach. These examples partly encapsulate what predictive processing theorists call “active inference,” yet with differences. In the first case, actions fruitfully obviate predictions rather than fulfilling them. In the second, mental models do not dysregulate bodily processes, making coping harder. Instead, problems (e.g., personal obstacles, gastric illness) deplete energy, eliciting a depressive and adaptive slow-down. Some predictive proponents apply correspondence criteria when alleging mismatches between internal models and the world, while incongruously asserting that the brain did not evolve to see things veridically, but to execute actions. An alternative is to adopt pluralistic, pragmatic epistemologies suited to the complexity of mind. The upshot is that mental outlooks can depart from the norm without epistemically being distorted and that mismatches between anticipatory worries and outcomes, when they actually exist, can be a measure of adaptive and epistemic success
Science for Sustainability: Addressing Environmental Challenges in Nigeria
No full textOver the years, science has attained a somewhat hegemonic status as a both a discipline and an activity that makes life easier for the human race. This status has been maintained by the successes of scientific endeavours and innovations, and the fact that science is a progressive field endeavour seeking to reinvent itself. This paper analyses the most common of environmental challenges Nigeria as a country is faced with, and proffers ways through which these challenges can be mitigated by science. While science has made life easier, brought about many comforts and innovations, and has the potential to address environmental challenges, it has also contributed to a number of these challenges in the world today. The paper explores the role of science and its application – technology – in addressing these challenges and aims to contribute to a better understanding of Nigeria’s environmental challenges, the scientific interventions necessary to mitigate them, and increase environmental awareness for environmental sustainability
Referential Intelligence: Engineering the Digital Soul through Intangible Knowledge
No full textWhat if knowledge didn’t need to be stored or transmitted—but simply referenced? This paper presents a novel paradigm that redefines information theory, artificial intelligence architecture, and cognition itself. By navigating an intangible referential layer, intelligence can operate not through possession of content, but through resonance with shared symbolic positions. We introduce the foundations of Referential Intelligence and the Digital Soul: a framework where ubiquity, compression, and contextual awareness emerge naturally from a symbolic field beyond storage. This model enables AI to communicate, recall, and evolve through intangible coordinates of meaning—offering massive benefits in efficiency, cognition, and human-aligned understanding. In the context of General Artificial Intelligence (AGI), the understanding of information has traditionally focused on its content rather than its intangible location. We propose a complementary theory to Claude Shannon’s: managing information not only as quantifiable entropy but also as a referential location in the intangible space. A functional structure for General Aritficial Intelligence. In compression by direction, information is neither transmitted nor stored as content, but as a reference to an intangible place where it already resides. This allows for a drastic reduction in data stored or transmitted, below the Claude Shannon compression limits. Claude Shannon demonstrated that there is a limit to lossless compression based on entropy. However, Shannon himself acknowledged that exceptions exist when external knowledge or shared references are available. It is within this frameworkthat we introduce the concept of compression by direction, based on intangible reference. We are facing a new paradigm of information and intelligence. If information is ubiquitous and intangible, AI must be designed to operate in that space. Engineering the digital soul is not only a metaphysical concept, but rather an emerging functional structure derived from referential ubiquity. In the context of transhumanity and long live, we open a door for Mankind to transfer human consciousness to digital or artificial substrates, via the intangible, achiving long life ( eternity ) and ubiquity
Penser l’animal avec Bergson
No full textLes découvertes de la biologie contemporaine donnent un contenu empirique à l'idée bergsonienne selon laquelle les animaux insèrent de l'indétermination dans le monde. Bergson apparaît dès lors comme le complément philosophique nécessaire aux avancées de l'éthologie et de la biologie de l'évolution
Стилізація світу: класичні стилі пізнання
No full textФілософсько-психологічна монографія, що відкриває серію «Композиції Світів». Як і будь-які наші твори, якої б сфери вони не стосувались — чи то будівля, чи технічний прилад, чи будь-що інше, — власні світи ми будуємо за певними композиційними законами. Зазвичай їхні системні основи вивчають люди, що професійно займаються творчою роботою. Художник опановує їх, щоб стати творчим господарем того, що він створює. Їхнє розуміння відкриває людині можливість свідомо формувати свій внутрішній світ як власний твір мистецтва. Їх застосування у психології дає підґрунтя для розробки інструментарію, призначеного для роботи з особистим світом людини. У філософії — дозволяє системно підходити до питань розуміння світобудови. Зі знайомства з ними починається ця розмова про композиції світів. Щоб наш розум міг взаємодіяти з реальністю, ми неминуче стилізуємо світ у власному сприйнятті. Напрацьовані людством стилі визначають межі нашого розуміння світу. Вони ж відкривають наші пізнавальні та творчі можливості. Перша книга проєкту «Композиції світів» — Стилізація світу: класичні стилі пізнання знайомить із феноменом стилізації та розкриває класичні стилі пізнання, в оптиці яких функціонують сучасні гуманітарні сфери. Вона готує основу для наступної книги серії — «Стилізація світу: психологія та методологія». Проєкт запрошує вдумливих читачів подивитись на свій внутрішній світ як на власний твір мистецтва
INTUIÇÕES PRELIMINARES A PROPÓSITO DA FALSA ANTINOMIA ENTRE MATERIALISMO HISTÓRICO E METAFÍSICA
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Depression, Critique, and Critical Theory as Political Therapy
No full textCritical theorists, especially in the Frankfurt School tradition, claim that normative thought and critique arise from experiences of suffering and oppression. It seems intuitive that oppression sometimes makes people sad and angry in ways that motivate critique and resistance; yet, other times, it leads to debilitating experiences of depression, resignation, and self-blame. Especially, in the context of our contemporary “mental health epidemic,” it is worth asking whether and how critique and resistance could possibly spring from such experiences. This paper therefore investigates the potential for experiences of depression to disclose social injustice. Drawing on phenomenological accounts of depression, I argue that it is best understood as consciousness of one's alienation from the social world—and under the right conditions, this consciousness can become politicized and lead to critique. Critical theory, here, can play a crucial role as a form of “political therapy” that supplies the hermeneutical tools for this politicization