Tommaso Bertolotti

A philosophical and evolutionary approach to cyber-bullying: social networks and the disruption of sub-moralities

Cyber-bullying, and other issues related to violence being committed online in prosocial environments, are beginning to constitute an emergency worldwide. Institutions are particularly sensitive to the problem especially as far as teenagers are concerned inasmuch as, in cases of inter-teen episodes, the deterrent power of ordinary justice (i.e. threaten to sue) is not as effective as it is between adults. In order to develop the most suitable policies, institution should not be satisfied with statistics and sociological perspectives on the phenomenon, but rather seek a deep ethical understanding—also referring to the biological and evolutionary past of human beings. The aim of this paper is to show a way to fill this theoretical gap, offering some answers (and some questions too) that can illuminate future policy-oriented research and reflection. In order to do so, we will start by connecting our argument to evolutionary studies carried out in the past two decades, focusing on gossip as a tool for social assortment, thus endowed with a dual function: protect the group from free riders, intruders and bullies but also bully the deviant members. In the “Mediating gossip through social networks” section, we will see which aspects of gossip, vital for bullying, are co-opted by social network scenarios. A fundamental trait of human social life, that is the subdivision in smaller coalitions, or sub-groups, will be shown as missing in social networks (SN) dynamics—therefore constituting themselves as structurally violent. The “Why and how do social networks empower bullying?” section will deal with techno-ethical and epistemological concerns regarding how gossip, mediated by SN, manages to empower cyber-bullying. The “Self-gossip and self-mobbing in the light of the disruption of sub-moralities” section will characterize cyber-bullying as often sparked by self-gossip (soon degrading into self-mobbing) in a scenario where familiar sub-groups, which also mediate defense and mutual understanding, are disrupted. The “Discussion and conclusion” section will consist of a philosophical summary, divided in two parts: a pars destruens analyzing whether SN, in their actual configurations, are fit for being used by humans-like-us, and a pars construens examining the broad potential consequences of highly enforced regulation aimed at contrasting cyber-bullying.

Theoretical considerations on cognitive niche construction

Cognitive niche theories consist in a theoretical framework that is proving extremely profitable in bridging evolutionary biology, philosophy, cognitive science, and anthropology by offering an inter-disciplinary ground, laden with novel approaches and debates. At the same time, cognitive niche theories are multiple, and differently related to niche theories in theoretical and evolutionary biology. The aim of this paper is to clarify the theoretical and epistemological relationships between cognitive and ecological niche theories. Also, by adopting a constructionist approach (namely by referring principally to ecological and cognitive niche construction theories) we will try to explain the shift from ecological to cognitive niches and their actual and theoretical overlaps. In order to do so, we will take two concepts expressing loose forms of causation in the interaction between organisms and their environment: the biological notion of “enablement” and the psycho-cognitive one of “affordance”.

Perverting Activism: Cyberactivism and Its Potential Failures In Enhancing Democratic Institutions

This paper analyzes the impact of new technologies on a range of practices related to activism. The first section shows how the functioning of democratic institutions can be impaired by scarce political accountability connected with the emergence of moral hazard; the second section displays how cyberactivism can improve the transparency of political dynamics; in the last section the authors turn specifically to cyberactivism and isolate its flaws and some of the most pernicious and self-defeating effects.

From Mindless Modeling to Scientific Models

This paper aims at contributing to the ongoing epistemological debate on the nature of models by proposing an excursus from emerging to scientific modeling that will highlight the similarities between the two forms: this analysis will also allow to focus on the development of those traits that are instead typical of scientific models. The analysis of basic forms of modeling will to show how even mindless processing of external reality does not provide passive descriptions but is rather a poietic aggression which constitutes external reality as the organism perceives it. In my argument I will make apparent how this poietic character is indeed common to both emerging and scientific modeling. My final contention will be that scientific endeavor, captured within Magnani’s notion of epistemic warfare, is not characterized by a dramatic qualitative difference in the nature of models at play, but by a new conception and attitude displayed by scientists in their used of models, also coupled with the other fundamental scientific tool: the experiment.

The Role of Agency Detection in the Invention of Supernatural Beings

Over the last decade, a multidisciplinary approach (merging cognitive science, anthropology and evolutionary psychology) has stressed the fundamental importance of cognitive constraints concerning the complex phenomenon defined as “religion”. The main feature is the predominant presence of belief in agent-concepts that display a strong counterfactual nature, in spite of a minor degree of counterintuitiveness. Consistently with the major trend in cognitive science, we contend that agents populating religious beliefs were generated by the same processes involved to infer the presence of ordinary agents. Coherently with the Peircean framework, in which all cognitive performance is considered as a sign-mediated activity, our main point is that those processes of agency detection are characterized at all levels - from the less conscious to the higher ones - by the inferential procedure called abduction. Hence, the very invention of supernatural agents seems to be the result of a particular series of abductive processes that served some other purposes before (i.e. the detection of predators and preys) and whose output was coherent with that of other abductive patterns. Eventually, they would be externalized and recapitulated in the well-known figures of deities, spirits, and so on: thoughts concerning supernatural beings, at first rather vague, were embodied in material culture with the result of fixing them in more stable and sharable representations that could be manipulated and acquired back in the mind in the definitive form.

Selecting Chance Curation Strategies: Is Chance Curation Related to the Richness of a Cognitive Niche?

The aim of this paper is to tackle the following issue: as it is renown that chances can be faked, it seems intuitive to think that the inhibition of chance-faking contexts is a good activity of chance curation. Yet, could this activity sometimes be counterproductive? The question will be answered positively considering the case of bullshit as a case of fake chances, but also as a fertile ground for learning and developing intuitions. Ultimately, this paper will argue that the peculiar context, that is the cognitive niche supporting the (potentially) fake chances, is the discriminating factor: indeed, a rich cognitive niche may benefit from certain kind of fake chances – which should therefore not be inhibited – whereas a poorer niche might not benefit from this situation, and therefore the preclusion of fake chances is an act of chance curation in those contexts.

Contemporary Finance as a Critical Cognitive Niche: An Epistemological Outlook on the Uncertain Effects of Contrasting Uncertainty

Cognitive niche construction theory provides a new comprehensive account for the development of human cultural and social organization with respect to the management of their environment. Cognitive niche construction can be seen as a way of lessening complexity and unpredictability of a given environment. In this paper, we are going to analyze economic systems as highly technological cognitive niches, and individuate a link between cognitive niche construction, unpredictability and a particular kind of economic crises.

Generative and Demonstrative Experiments

Current scientific practice is often identified with the experimental framework. Yet, what “experimenting” means could be less than perfectly clear. Going beyond the common sense conception of experiment, two broad categories of experiments can be tentatively identified: the generative experiment and the demonstrative experiment. While the former aims at generating new knowledge, new corroborations of hypotheses etc., the latter—which is actually the kind of experiment most laypeople came to terms with in their lives—is designed so that, by being successful, it reverberates knowledge on the experimenters/witnesses, thus instructing them, albeit the experimental outcome was well known beforehand. Prima facie the uninformed observer may not always be able to tell whether an experiment is generative or demonstrative, therefore the existing distinction must rely on something else, namely the framework they are embedded into. The concept of epistemic warfare, recently introduced by Magnani, can be of help in investigating this distinction, also to the scope of showing that it is not a sterile dichotomy but rather a theoretically fruitful continuum, and can help the analysis of epistemically relevant issues such as the repetition/replication of experiments and their potential failure.

Camouflaging Truth: A Biological, Argumentative and Epistemological Outlook from Biological to Linguistic Camouflage

AbstractCamouflage commonly refers to the ability to make something appear as different from what it actually is, or not to make it appear at all. This concept originates from biological studies to describe a range of strategies used by organisms to dissimulate their presence in the environment, but it is frequently borrowed by other semantic fields as it is possible to camouflage one’s position, intentions, opinion etc.: an interesting conceptual continuum between the multiple denotations of camouflage seems to emerge from the multiple homologies. Following this outlook, the first part of this paper aims at sketching out the main forms of camouflage as understood within their biological framework, insisting on the inferential dynamics underdetermined and allowing camouflage, making use of the concept of abduction as received from the Peircean heritage. The second part explores some of the most relevant occurrences of camouflage in dialectical and rhetorical perspectives. The third section aims at drawing the sums of the comparison between linguistic and biological camouflage, showing how strategies aimed at debunking verbal camouflage correspond to their respective countermeasures in biologically-intended camouflage.

Online communities as virtual cognitive niches

In this paper we aim at discussing cognitive and epistemic features of online communities, by the use of cognitive niche constructions theories, presenting them as virtual cognitive niches. Virtual cognitive niches can be considered as digitally-encoded collaborative distributions of diverse types of information into an environment performed by agents to aid thinking and reasoning about some target domain. Discussing this definition, we will also consider how online communities, as networks displaying a social bias, can both foster civic awareness and promote problematic group-led behaviors in the virtually aggregated crowds. To support this affirmation, we will take into account the use of online communication networks during crises and we will argue that it can lead to ethically dubious consequences.