manwithoutqualities | Monthly Archive

Archive | August, 2008

Swarm Robotics

Here is a BBC report from A.I. XI

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August 8, 2008 Comments Off Short URL artificial intelligence, stigmergy, swarm intelligence

As usual, Dan Little has posted some thoughtful reflections on the multifarious tributaries that feed into the complex that is social identity. It brings to mind a recent correspondence I had with someone who was adamant that I call them by their “new” name (legally changed by deed poll), someone who I happened to know under their birth name.

My response to her was that legal identity is but one component of, and the shallowest notion of, the complex that is social identity. She will always be known as XXXXXX in the minds of those who knew her in another context and that this is beyond her control. Such is the dynamics of social reality.

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August 4, 2008 Comments Off Short URL identity, philosophy of social science, social cognition, social constructivism, social epistemology, social identity, social ontology, sociocognition

Alzheimer’s

Here’s a restrained and sensitive article from the Scotsman on Claude Wischik‘s work on Alzheimer’s disease. The tone of the article matches the low-key disposition and existential focus of Wischik. Speaking to an Alzheimic patient on a regular basis, I have often used synonyms for the metaphor of “tangles”:

Wischik has spent 24 years studying the neurofibrillary ‘tangles’ that first destroy nerve cells critical for memory and then neurons in other parts of the brain in those suffering from Alzheimer’s.

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August 2, 2008 Comments Off Short URL Alzheimer's, brain damage, Claude Wischik, cognitive science, consciousness, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, psychology, rationality, reason