Here’s a brief view of neurophilosophy from Anthony Grayling in The Philosopher’s Magazine.
Grayling on neurophilosophy
August 25, 2010
Comments Off | 
Neurophysics, anthony grayling, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, mri, neuron, neurophilosophy, neuroscience | 
Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
“Artificial Intelligence”
August 22, 2010I shall disclaim responsibility for this particular choice of terms. The phrase “artificial intelligence,” which led me to it, was coined, I think, right on the Charles River, at MIT. Our own research group at Rand and Carnegie Mellon University have prefered phrases like “complex information processing” and “simulation of cognitive processes.” But then we run into new terminological difficulties, for the dictionary also says that “to simulate” means “to assume or have the mere appearance or form of, without the reality; to imitate; counterfeit; pretend.” At any rate, “artificial intelligence” seems to be here to stay, and it may prove easier to cleanse the phrase than to dispense with it. In time it will become sufficiently idiomatic that it will no longer be the target of cheap rhetoric.
Herbert Simon 1996
Comments Off | Herbert Simon, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind | Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
Joaquin Fuster
August 13, 2010
I recently had the honor and good fortune to be on the same panel as neuroscientist Joaquin Fuster. We had been in correspondence over the years: the intellectual generosity of this man, one of the giants in the field, knows no bounds. I was thrilled to finally meet him in person. Below are some shots of him in full flight – his talk was entitled “Frederick Hayek’s Theory of Mind and Human Cognition.” (As co-panelist I was pitching Hayek as an extended mind theorist of sorts). Here is a lecture of Joaquin’s entitled “Distributed Memory and the Perception-Action Cycle” that is not far removed from his talk in San Diego. Here are some highlights from a recent lecture entitled “The brain is a search engine.”
In conversation with Roland Zahn, another fascinating mind.
Dinner with yours truly.
Comments Off | cognitive science, connectionism, consciousness, cybernetics, hayek, joaquin fuster, memory, networks, neurobiology, neuron, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, the sensory order | Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
Shapiro’s Embodied Cognition
August 11, 2010Larry Shapiro’s book Embodied Cognition has just been published. Anything by Larry is well worth a read. This book comes with dust jacket recommendations from no less than heavy hitters such as Fred Adams, Arthur Glenberg, Rob Wilson, Elliott Sober and Ken Aizawa. If you haven’t already done so, check out his excellent The Mind Incarnate.
Comments Off | Lawrence Shapiro, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, embodied cognition, embodiment, neurophilosophy, philosophy of mind, psychology | Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
Network architecture of the long-distance pathways in the macaque brain
July 29, 2010Here’s an interesting article by Dharmendra Modha and Raghavendra Singh.
Comments Off | Macaque, brain, brain science, cognitive science, mri, network theory, networks, neurobiology, neurophilosophy, neuroscience | Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
Why is consciousness so mysterious?
June 17, 2010A nice chat with Dave Chalmers on this topic.
Comments Off | cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, david chalmers, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, physicalism, property dualism, qualia, science | Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
The New Science of the Mind
May 15, 2010
Here’s a soon to be released book written by Mark Rowlands one of the major extended mind/situated cognition players. Let’s hope the proofing is significantly better than what has been coming out of MIT Press of late. This book will be reviewed by Michael Madary in The Journal of Mind and Behavior.
Comments Off | Embedded, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, brain, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, distributed cognition, embodiment, extended mind, externalism, mark rowlands, michael madary, neurophilosophy, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, sartre | Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
Notes and Neurons
May 13, 2010World Science Festival featuring Bobby McFerrin, best known as the writer and performer of one of my favourite songs Don’t worry be happy.
Is our response to music hard-wired or culturally determined? Is the reaction to rhythm and melody universal or influenced by environment? Join host John Schaefer, Jamshed Barucha, scientist Daniel Levitin, Professor Lawrence Parsons and musical artist Bobby McFerrin for live performances and cross cultural demonstrations to illustrate music’s note-worthy interaction with the brain and our emotions.
Comments Off | Bobby McFerrin, Daniel Levitin, Jamshed Barucha, John Schaefer, Lawrence Parsons, cognitive science, mri and music, music, neuron, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, world science festival | Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
Embodiment, Stigmergy, and Swarm Intelligence
May 7, 2010
Here is a chapter from a book by Michael Dawson, Brian Dupuis, and Michael Wilson (all of the Biological Computation Project, University of Alberta) that has just come my way and is entitled From Bricks to Brains: The Embodied Cognitive Science of LEGO Robots. In fact, all the chapters in draft are freely available to be downloaded from the book’s dedicated webpage. This offer will cease on publication of the book – which will be VERY soon. There is also a nicely produced 15 minute mini-documentary on the publisher’s site featuring Dawson and Depuis (click the video tab).
Comments Off | Brian Dupuis, Embedded, Michael Dawson, Michael Wilson, active externalism, active perception, anti-representationalist, artificial intelligence, bricks to brains, cognitive modeling, cognitive science, computational intelligence, computer simulations, concept of mind, connectionism, consciousness, cybernetics, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, embodiment, emergence, extended mind, feedback, lego, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, psychology, robotics, robots, situated cognition, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior, swarm intelligence | Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
Cambridge Handbook of Computational Psychology
April 22, 2010
Here’s a review by Robert West of Ron Sun’s (Ed.) book that has been very useful to me (I mean that I have already been using the book): Rob West’s review will better articulate the book’s virtues. (Reference books are notoriously difficult to review – a job admirably well done by Rob West).
Abstract:
Computational psychology refers to the effort to create computational mechanisms that, in some way, mimic mechanisms within the brain. More specifically, the goal in creating these mechanisms is to show that they can systematically reproduce patterns of human behaviour elicited under specific conditions. From this it is inferred that these mechanisms bare some similarity to the brain mechanisms that produced the human behaviours. In most cases this involves mimicking the results of psychology experiments, although it is good to see in this book, two chapters discussing the application of this approach to non experimental areas (multi agent social interactions and cognitive engineering).
Comments Off | computational psychology, multi-agent modeling, network theory, networks, neurophilosophy, psychology, robert west, ron sun, social cognition, social connectionism, social epistemology, social ontology, sociology | Permalink
Posted by manwithoutqualities
