Dr Hajo Greif

In autumn 2022, Hajo Greif was elected as a member of the new board of IACAP, the International Association for Computing and Philosophy. The association’s board now includes Steve McKinlay (Wellington Institute of Technology, President), Björn Lundgren (Utrecht University, Vice President), Ramón Alvarado (University of Oregon, Treasurer), Ahmed Amer (Santa Clara University), Brian Ballsun-Stanton (Macquarie University), Arzu Formánek (University of Vienna) and Thomas M. Powers (University of Delaware).

Hajo Greif (2022). Analogue Models and Universal Machines. Paradigms of Epistemic Transparency in Artificial Intelligence. Minds & Machines 32: 111-133. Special Issue “Machine Learning: Prediction Without Explanation?”, edited by Florian Boge, Paul Grünke and Rafaela Hillerbrand. Open Access. DOI: 10.1007/s11023-022-09596-9  

Abstract: The problem of epistemic opacity in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often characterised as a problem of intransparent algorithms that give rise to intransparent models. However, the degrees of transparency of an AI model should not be taken as an absolute measure of the properties of its algorithms but of the model’s degree of intelligibility to human users. Its epistemically relevant elements are to be specified on various levels above and beyond the computational one. In order to elucidate this claim, I first contrast computer models and their claims to algorithm-based universality with cybernetics-style analogue models and their claims to structural isomorphism between elements of model and target system (Black 1962). While analogue models aim at perceptually or conceptually accessible model-target relations, computer models give rise to a specific kind of underdetermination in these relations that needs to be addressed in specific ways. I then undertake a comparison between two contemporary AI approaches that, although related, distinctly align with the above modelling paradigms and represent distinct strategies towards model intelligibility: Deep Neural Networks and Predictive Processing. I conclude that their respective degrees of epistemic transparency primarily depend on the underlying purposes of modelling, not on their computational properties.

Acknowledgements: The research presented in this publication was supported by NCN (National Science Centre) OPUS 19 grant ref. 2020/37/B/HS1/01809. The origin of this paper was a symposium on ‘Deep Learning and the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence’ co-organised by the author at the GWP 2019 conference of the German Society for Philosophy of Science. I thank Cameron Buckner, Holger Lyre and Carlos Zednik for motivating and moving this project. I also thank the guest editors of this Special Issue for their encouragement and patience, Alessandro Facchini and Alberto Termine for their input in the process of preparing the manuscript, and two anonymous reviewers for their competent and constructive criticisms.

Hajo Greif (2022). Likeness-Making and the Evolution of Cognition. Biology & Philosophy 37 (2022): Article 1 (online). Open Access. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-021-09830-1.

Abstract: Paleontological evidence suggests that human artefacts with intentional markings might have originated already in the Lower Paleolithic, up to 500.000 years ago and well before the advent of ‘behavioural modernity’. These markings apparently did not serve instrumental, tool-like functions, nor do they appear to be forms of figurative art. Instead, they display abstract geometric patterns that potentially testify to an emerging ability of symbol use. In a variation on Ian Hacking’s speculative account of the possible role of “likeness-making” in the evolution of human cognition and language, this essay explores the central role that the embodied processes of making and the collective practices of using such artefacts might have played in early human cognitive evolution. Two paradigmatic findings of Lower Paleolithic artefacts are discussed as tentative evidence of likenesses acting as material scaffolds in the emergence of symbolic reference-making. They might provide the link between basic abilities of mimesis and imitation and the development of modern language and thought.

Acknowledgements: The (already temporally distant) foundations for this work were laid in my Austrian Science Fund (FWF) grant J3448-G15. A first version of this paper was presented at the 3rd International Avant-Conference 2017 in Lublin, Poland. I thank the organiser, Marcin Trybulec, for encouragement back then, and Peter Gärdenfors, Anton Killin, Kim Sterelny and Jörg Wernecke for helpful comments and practical suggestions later on.

Hajo Greif (2021). Adaptation and its Analogues: Biological Categories for Biosemantics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 90 (2021): 298–307. Open Access. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.

Abstract: “Teleosemantic” or “biosemantic” theories form a strong naturalistic programme in the philosophy of mind and language. They seek to explain the nature of mind and language by recourse to a natural history of “proper functions” as selected-for effects of language- and thought-producing mechanisms. However, they remain vague with respect to the nature of the proposed analogy between selected-for effects on the biological level and phenomena that are not strictly biological, such as reproducible linguistic and cultural forms. This essay critically explores various interpretations of this analogy. It suggests that these interpretations can be explicated by contrasting adaptationist with pluralist readings of the evolutionary concept of adaptation. Among the possible interpretations of the relations between biological adaptations and their analogues in language and culture, the two most relevant are a linear, hierarchical, signalling-based model that takes its cues from the evolution of co-operation and joint intentionality and a mutualistic, pluralist model that takes its cues from mimesis and symbolism in the evolution of human communication. Arguing for the merits of the mutualistic model, the present analysis indicates a path towards an evolutionary pluralist version of biosemantics that will align with theories of cognition as being environmentally “scaffolded”. Language and other cultural forms are partly independent reproducible structures that acquire proper functions of their own while being integrated with organism-based cognitive traits in co-evolutionary fashion.

Acknowledegements: This article started as an improvised contribution to the ‘The Future of Teleosemantics’ conference in Bielefeld, Germany, in 2018. I thank the organisers, especially Peter Schulte, for providing the opportunity to present my first ideas – which matured with the help of the critical comments from the participants, especially Ruth Millikan, and two anonymous reviewers.