Wonderful to see Douglas Hofstadter’s book I Am a Strange Loop win an LA Times Book Award. What passess as the literati these days needs to be exposed to a mind that is highly cultured, literary and that has unforced conceptual depth. See the Scientific American and the JASSS reviews from last year.
Pardon the title of this posting but it’s the best I can do.
A mini-interview in the New Scientist (April 19-25) caught my eye. Jill Bolte Taylor’s story gives credence to the network model of cognitive architecture that postulates that cognitive representations consist of widely distributed networks of cortical neurons. Cognitive functions, namely perception, attention, memory, language, and intelligence, consist of neural transactions within and between these networks. Jill in her own words:
So, I look at us as a collection of neurocircuitry of thoughts and emotions and physiological responses. When you see the brain as the kind of computer network that it is, it becomes easier to manipulate.
Jill, you see, had her left hemisphere traumatised, and shifted herself into her right hemisphere – a “cognitive choice” as she puts it. The interviewer make the point that Jill’s claim resembles the claim made by those who meditate. Jill:
There are people who are comfortable witnessing their thoughts, while there are others who think they are their thoughts. Learning to observe our neural circuitry and not engage with it is a skill we all can learn.
Yes, indeed. Secular Buddhist training - ”empty mind” – dispenses with the homunculus that Cartesianism postulates. For more on Jill, see her website.
Two of my passions – ballet and brain – caught my eye in the unlikely guise of a review and preview of Wayne McGregor’s Entity at Sadler’s Wells. Rather than McGregor’s ideas being filtered through a faintly comprehending dance journalist:
Technology fiend McGregor is engaged on a continuing investigation into brain and body. The ultimate goal is to create “artificially intelligent, autonomous chor-eographic agents”. In other words, he and his colleagues hope to develop software that can think for itself and help choreographers rethink what they do with the body. It’s a properly Frankenstein-ian project, a collaboration that has included cognitive psychologists and cardiac specialists, as it probes the way the brain’s signals transmute into movement.
check out this video clip with McGregor himself. The dream ticket would of course be Sylvie Guillem and McGregor.
With the film Iron Man about to be released, the Hollywood publicity machine has hit full stride. Despite the symbiotic relationship of Hollywood to glossy magazine culture, there are occasionally some interesting articles to be found. One such article is the May edition of Popular Science. What’s being discussed is Exoskeleton technology – something that has a deep resonance with Andy Clark’s argument/vision set out in his Natural-Born Cyborgs: also referenced by Clark is Stelarc the “cyborg” and the work of Kevin Warwick.
By the way, the man with the suited Exoskeleton is none other than the amazing Steve Jacobsen.
Not surprisingly, Black Sabbath’s Iron Man from their classic album Paranoid, has been cannibalized for flogging this film:
Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all,
Or if he moves will he fall?
Is he alive or dead?
Has he thoughts within his head?
Well just pass him there
Why should we even care?
He was turned to steel
In the great magnetic field
Where he traveled time
For the future of mankind
Nobody wants him
He just stares at the world
Planning his vengeance
That he will soon unfold
Now the time is here
For iron man to spread fear
Vengeance from the grave
Kills the people he once saved
Nobody wants him
They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him
Now he has his revenge
Heavy boots of lead
Fills his victims full of dread
Running as fast as they can
Iron man lives again!
Thank you Raymond Tallis for this well needed intellectual astringent.
An article in the New York Times reports that philosophy enrollment in the US is significantly up. In an age of overly early specialization and technocratic training purely instrumental to the job market, this is reassuring.
This said, I’m sure there are departments and courses that fit the profile of:
“People sitting under trees and talking about stupid stuff”
I suspect that the term “luxury major” means that if it’s not functional to the market place, it’s a luxury.
Barry Loewer, Rutgers department chairman, said that many students have double-majored in philosophy and psychology or economics, go on to become doctors, lawyers, writers, investment bankers and even commodities traders. There is absolutely nothing new in that – the City of London has many such people.
Frances Egan, at Rutgers, hits the nail on the head:
It has become harder for students to predict what specialties might be in demand in an uncertain economy, some may be more apt to choose their major based simply on what they find interesting. “Philosophy is a lot of fun,” said Professor Egan, who graduated with a philosophy degree in the tough economic times of the 1970s. “A lot of students are in it because they find it intellectually rewarding.”
What better reason for doing anything?
And then of course there is the dating game:
Jenna Schaal-O’Connor, a 20-year-old sophomore who is majoring in cognitive science and linguistics, said philosophy had other perks. She said she found many male philosophy majors interesting and sensitive.
“That whole deep existential torment,” she said. “It’s good for getting girlfriends.”
How inauthentic!!
Vol.28 No 3. Summer 2007
Vol.28 No 4. Autumn 2007
Why History Matters: Associations and Causal Judgment in Hume and Cognitive Science.
Mark Collier, University of Minnesota, Morris
The Phenomenology of Freedom.
Tomis Kapitan, Northern Illinois University
Process, Quantum Coherence, and the Stream of Consciousness.
Keith A. Choquette, Brockton, Massachusetts
The Frontal Feedback Model of the Evolution of the Human Mind: Part 2, The Human Brain and the Frontal Feedback System.
Raymond A. Noack, Seattle, Washington
The Knobe Effect: A Brief Overview.
Adam Feltz, Florida State University
An Improved Reply to the Argument from Categorization.
Dennis Earl, Coastal Carolina University
Time, Thought, and Consciousness.
Joseph Glicksohn and Sharon Lipperman-Kreda, Bar-Ilan University
Thanks to Simon Garnier I discovered this wonderful website dedicated to representations of complexity. As a social epistemologist I have a particular interest in knowledge networks and social networks. The images that draw upon biology for inspiration are particular compelling - on aesthetic grounds alone.
