Maurita Joan Harney

To some, the topic of AI and Creativity (like the topic of 'machine thinking') might sound like a contradiction in terms. For creativity in thinking and other activities, as commonly understood, requires us to withdraw the constraints implicit in rules and rational appraisal. But what could be more rational or rule-bound than the model of the mind and cognition on which AI is founded? The implicit connection here, between creativity and 'irrationalism', owes something to Sigmund Freud, who saw creativity as the link between art and play. Both are activities pursued for their own sake, and both involve the suspension of rational principles: "The creative writer does much the same as the child at play. He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously-that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion-while separating it sharply from reality." There is no reason to suppose that creativity in science is any different. It is identified as that initial phase in scientific inquiry when the principles of rational evaluation and assessment are suspended and a bold conjecture or intuitive guess is made. It is that phase prior to the process of testing by means of the rational principles of deduction and induction. When creativity is identified with thinking which is intuitive, conjectural or hypothetical, rather than rule-governed or rational, it is tempting to dismiss it as 'irrational'-as something mysterious, ineffable, resistant to attempts to analyse it or appraise it in any way. However, I prefer to dispense with the dubious dichotomy of rational/irrational, and focus instead on the kinds of inquiry which might be called conjectural, creative, or intuitive. Following cultural historian Carlo Ginzburg, I will be suggesting that conjectural knowledge of this kind constitutes an epistemological paradigm which is different from, but complementary to, the paradigm of scientific knowledge (which is governed by considerations relating to rational explanation, and notions of evidence, truth, and justification). It is a paradigm more easily recognisable in the study of cultural meanings than in standard approaches to the study of scientific phenomena. For this reason I will be suggesting that we turn to the domain of cultural inquiry to seek the conceptual tools for analysing the creative component in scientific discovery. More specifically, I propose to explore some ideas drawn from recent developments in literary theory and studies in rhetoric. It is here that I think we might find some valuable insights for conceptualising the creative process. Such an exploration is itself an exercise in creativity, for it requires us to transgress the traditional boundaries which demarcate and dichotomise the arts versus the sciences, the factual versus the mythical, the rational versus the poetic.

“The Gaze” as a dimension of visual perception focuses attention on the perceived rather than the perceiver, and underlines the idea that the “object” of perception must be understood relationally, and as primarily affective. This contrasts with the Cartesian-derived view based on an underlying separation of subject and object which makes it possible to adopt a “spectator” view of knowledge. This paper explores aspects of the origins and consequences of these contrasting views showing the importance of Merleau-Ponty’s Umweltian-inspired notion of embodied and enactive intentionality in reconceptualising the objectivist view of nature and of science that is dictated by the spectator view.

If there is a common theme through the rich diversity of Max Charlesworth’s academic life and works, it is the quest to understand human action as meaningful, significant and subject to interpretation rather than reducible to the explanatory techniques of positivistic science. This orientation is summed up in the philosophical concept of intentionality. Intentionality is a key notion for continental philosophers whose ideas formed the subject-matter of Max’s legendary course in ‘Contemporary European Philosophy’ at Melbourne University and later, of the foundation philosophy programs at Deakin University. The origins of the concept of intentionality are to be found in mediaeval philosophy – another of Max’s teaching areas, and a commitment to intentionality is deeply implicit in his engagement with the religious and the spiritual as well as with ethics.In this essay I trace the changing conceptions of intentionality in recent philosophy and in doing so, indicate developments within the continental philosophical tradition and its shifting relations with the analytical tradition in Australian philosophy.

Established at the annual meeting of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies on July 3rd 2014, in conjunction with Springer Publishing, publishers of the Society’s official journal, Biosemiotics, the Annual Biosemiotic Achievement Award seeks to recognize those papers published in the journal that present novel and potentially important contributions to the ongoing project of biosemiotic research, its scientific impact, and its future prospects. Here the winner of the Biosemiotics Achievement Award for 2019 is announced: the award goes to Y.H. Hendlin for the article ‘I Am a Fake Loop: the Effects of Advertising-Based Artificial Selection’.

Established at the annual meeting of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies on July3rd 2014, in conjunction with Springer Publishing, publishers of the Society’s official journal, Biosemiotics,the Annual Biosemiotic Achievement Award seeks to recognize those papers published in the journal thatpresent novel and potentially important contributions to the ongoing project of biosemiotic research, itsscientific impact, and its future prospects. Here the winner of the Biosemiotics Achievement Award for 2018is announced: the award goes to Mirko Cerrone for his article ‘Umwelt and Ape Language Experiments: onthe Role of Iconicity in the Human-Ape Pidgin Language’.

Phenomenology since Husserl has always had a problematic relationship with empirical science. In its early articulations, there was Husserl's rejection of ‘the scientific attitude’, Merleau-Ponty's distancing of the scientifically-objectified self, and Heidegger's critique of modern science. These suggest an antipathy to science and to its methods of explaining the natural world. Recent developments in neuroscience have opened new opportunities for an engagement between phenomenology and cognitive science and through this, a re-thinking of science and its hidden assumptions more generally. This is so partly because of the shortcomings of conventional mechanistically-conceived science in dealing with complex and dynamic phenomena such as climate change, brain plasticity, the behaviour of collectives, the dynamics of various microbiological processes, etc. But it is also due to recent phenomenological scholarship focussed on the ‘embodied’ phenomenology of Husserl's Ideen II and Merleau Ponty's later ontology of nature which have helped to extend the insights of phenomenology beyond the narrowly ‘human’ to an understanding of nature (which includes the human) more generally. Thus recontextualised, phenomenology is well placed to examine some of the assumptions that give rise to the reductionism and associated scientism which has characterised conventional science in its approach to the study of natural processes. In light of this, it might be suggested that the ‘anti-science’ of early articulations of phenomenology is more a hostility to the underlying assumptions of science as conventionally understood than to science itself e that it is scientism rather than science that is targeted. In this paper, I aim to show how a phenomenological naturalism might be seen as a necessary step towards the development of a non-reductionist and non-scientistic approach to scientific inquiry. A key to this is a reconceptualization of nature as inclusive of meanings and of mind. It is a conception developed by Merleau-Ponty, especially in his later ontology of nature, and one that is shared by American pragmatist philosopher of science, C.S. Peirce (1839e1914). For both philosophers, meaning must be understood in terms of an ontology which is relational rather than atomistic, and dynamic or processual rather than static and substance-based. For Merleau-Ponty this is an experientially-derived ontology; for Peirce it is a more conceptually-based one. In this paper, I explore this connection between these two philosophers in two stages. The first is by reference to Peirce's theory of signs or semiotics. More specifically, I look at the application of this theory to the study of biological processes as developed in Peirce-inspired biosemiotics. In the light of this, I suggest that Merleau-Ponty's account of intentional relations in nature might be articulated as semiotic relations, and can serve as a philosophical basis for a non-reductive biological science. I then turn to questions relating to the ontology of nature. I explore Merleau-Ponty's experientially-based “ontology of flesh” and Peirce's distinctive form of naturalism to show affinities at this ontological level. These affinities consist in commitments to a reality that includes possibility, meaning, temporality, and final causation e that is, an ontology which is far more inclusive than that of conventional positivistic science. Peirce's broader scientific metaphysics enables us to extend Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological naturalism beyond the biological to the physical sciences. Whilst Merleau-Ponty's ontology of nature provides the experiential basis necessary for a critique of scientism, Peirce establishes the relevance of that ontology for a re-conceived empirical science.