Claude Shannon formalized the notion of information transmission rate and capacity for pre-existing channels. Wittgenstein in his later work insisted that linguistic meaning be defined in terms of use in language games. C. S. Peirce, the father of semiotics, realized the importance of sign, signified, and interpretant in processes of semiosis. In particular, the connection between sign and signified does not take place in a platonic vacuum but is situated, embodied, embedded, and must be mediated by an interpretant. We introduce a rigorous mathematical notion of meaning, as (1) agent- and observer- perceptible information in interaction games between an agent and its environment or between an agent and other agents, that is (2) useful for satisfying homeostatic and other drives, needs, goals or intentions. With this framework it is possible to address issues of sensor- and actuator- design, origins, evolution, and maintenance for biological and artificial systems. Moreover, correspondences between channels of meaning are exploited by biological entities in predicting the behavior or reading the intent of others, as in predator-prey and social interaction. Social learning, imitation, communication of experience also develop and can be developed on this substrate of shared meaning.

. This paper is devoted to discuss a general tendency in contextualism which is known as "radical contextualism". In the first part I state the well known paradox of semantic holism, as discussed in philosophy of language: if meaning is holistic there is no possibility to share any meaning. In the second part I present the different answers to this paradox, from atomism to different forms of holism. In the third part I give a criticism of the traditional interpretation of Wittgenstein as a supporter of global holism. I stress some similarities between Wittgenstein's thought and Multi Context theories in artificial inteligence. In the last part I give some argument against a rigid interpretation of "local holism": I claim the need to give restrictions to local holim and to develop a study of the connections between "default" properties and high level rules which are studied in Multi-Context theories. 1 The paradox of semantic holism The work of Wittgenstein is apparently c...

Whilst a straightforward consequence of the formalism of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the phenomenon of quantum teleportation has given rise to considerable puzzlement. In this paper, the teleportation protocol is reviewed and these puzzles dispelled. It is suggested that they arise from two primary sources: (1) the familiar error of hypostatizing an abstract noun (in this case, ‘information’) and (2) failure to differentiate interpretation dependent from interpretation independent features of quantum mechanics. A subsidiary source of error, the simulation fallacy, is also identified. The resolution presented of the puzzles of teleportation illustrates the benefits of paying due attention to the logical status of ‘information ’ as an abstract noun.

This paper documents a series of interdisciplinary exchanges between the authors -- one a psychologist and philosopher, the other a computer scientist-as they pondered some of the scientific and cultural challenges of the new millennium. The paper briefly reviews the closer-than-ever possibility of creating artificial life, intelligence and cultures brought about by recent developments in the fields of biology, chemistry and computer sciences. It mentions previous scientific breakthroughs that preceded large social and political transitions and comments on the potential impact that the most recent advances in Artificial Life and Artificial Intelligence could have in contemporary belief systems (e.g. Law, Religion, etc).

What would a Wittgensteinian computational linguistics be like?

Human interactions with Information Technology tools are reproducing organisational cultural patterns in a process similar to the evolution of human tools and language. A multidisciplinary research in tool-mediated activity, culture, language and cognition will examine new concepts that can be important for the design of organisationally fit Information Technology interface tools. By using qualitative and quantitative analysis together with the fields of anthropology, philosophy, cognitive sciences and human computer interaction this thesis shows that cultural fitness is an important variable that can determine in a substantial degree the rejection or adoption of a tool in organisational environment. Qualitative and quantitative data collected from organisational simulations at the Faculty of Information

A hallmark of a child’s first two years of life is their entry into language, from first productive word use around 12 months of age to the emergence of combinatorial speech in their second year. What is the nature of early language development and how is it shaped by everyday experience? This work builds from the ground up to study early word learning, characterizing vocabulary growth and its relation to the child’s environment. Our study is guided by the idea that the natural activities and social structures of daily life provide helpful learning constraints. We study this through analysis of the largest-ever corpus of one child’s everyday experience at home. Through the Human Speechome Project, the home of a family with a young child was outfitted with a custom audio-video recording system, capturing more than 200,000 hours of audio and video of daily life from birth to age three. The annotated subset of this data spans the child’s 9-24 month age range and contains more than 8 million words of transcribed speech, constituting a detailed record of both the child’s input and linguistic development. Such a comprehensive, naturalistic dataset presents new research opportunities but also requires new analysis approaches – questions must be operationalized to leverage the full scale of the data. We