August 2008 – manwithoutqualities

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August 28, 2008Aristotle, civil conversation, conservatism, Debra Candreva, Eric Kos, George Feaver, Gerhard Wolmarans, hegel, hobbes, idealism, inference to the best explanation, Josiah Lee Auspitz, Keith Sutherland, kenneth minogue, liberalism, liberty, martyn thompson, oakeshott, philosophical jurisprudence, philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of social science, political philosophy, relativism, Richard Friedman, Richard Rorty, robert grant, social constructivism, social epistemology, Spinoza, terry nardin, timothy fuller, Wendell John Coats Jr

The Intellectual Legacy of Michael Oakeshott

A rather belated plug for this book. The follow up is currently being edited.

August 20, 2008cognitive science, cognitive systems research, neurobiology, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, psychology, social cognition, sociocognition, sociology, swarm intelligence

Top of the Cognitive Systems Research Pops

This is sad, I know – it reminds me of when the “Top of the Pops” actually meant something to us 70s kids! Anyway, I was pleased to learn that 11 of the 13 articles from the themed double issue of Cognitive Systems Research (“Perspectives on Social Cognition“) have appeared in the top 25 most downloaded…

August 14, 2008cognitive science, criminal verdicts, csi, episteme, epistemology, Forbes, forensic science, forensics, John Tierney, justice, new york times, Radley Balko, Roger Koppl, social epistemology

Bad science story picked up the NYT

The Roger Koppl story that I’ve been plugging for a few months has been picked up by the New York Times.

August 14, 2008hayek, Kevin Rudd, Oliver Hartwich, The Road to Serfdom

The Caricatured Hayek

There’s an article in The Australian taking Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to task for his rather crude take on Hayek. Oliver Hartwich does a good job in rebutting Rudd’s views. Of course we expect the vulgarization of first-order thinkers by politicians. There are still many in academic circles who fall into the same stance when it comes…

August 13, 2008document repositories, Scribd

Scribd platform

I want to give a plug to the Scribd platform. I have papers listed with several document repositories and none are as flexible, easy to negotiate and as “good looking” as Scribd. It has some nice features including tracking traffic for each document and the ability to leave comments (which I’ve chosen to disable). I would highly…

August 12, 2008criminal verdicts, csi, epistemology, Forbes, forensics, Radley Balko, Roger Koppl, slate, social epistemology, testimony

Follow up to: What’s Wrong With CSI

Here’s an article in Slate “hot off the press” by Roger Koppl and Radley Balko. It makes for a nice follow up to the earlier Forbes story (and Koppl article) I drew attention to.

August 12, 2008Andy Clark, cognitive science, consciousness, cyborgs, distributed knowledge, embodiment, emergence, extended mind, Heidegger, neurophilosophy, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, psychology

Andy Clark and Cyborgs

Fans of the work of Andy Clark and in particular his views on cyborgs will be pleased to note that his writing about cyborgs is the focus of a special issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.

August 12, 2008complexity, Dover Trial, epistemology, evidence, evolution, intelligent design, philosophy of science, relativism, science, science wars, social constructivism, social epistemology, sociology, Steve Fuller

Steve Fuller on the Dover Trial

Here is a post on John Wilkins’ Evolving Thoughts bog that picks up on Sahotra Sarkar’s review of Steve Fuller’s latest book in the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The conflict between Fuller and his critics is sure run and run with ever increasing bitterness. A minor point. Sarkar writes that: “He [Fuller] is widely credited…

August 10, 2008chess, cognition, cognitive science, connectionism, consciousness, memory, philosophy of mind

The Expert Mind

There’s a nice article in Scientific American entitled “The Expert Mind: Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well.” What struck me was the excerpt below which seems to be grist for the connectionist mill in that the expert is not confronted…

August 9, 20081, criminal verdicts, csi, DNA, Economics, episteme, epistemology, evidence, fbi, Forbes, forensic science, forensics, justice, Roger Koppl, social epistemology, testimony

What’s Wrong With CSI

I’ve had several requests to make this recent article available despite it still being freely available on the Forbes site (I know there have been some annoying pop-up advertisement windows.) Anyway, check out Roger’s co-authored article for EPISTEME on this topic: Epistemics for Forensics. Forensic evidence doesn’t always tell the truth. Forensic evidence is foolproof,…