Browse by:

Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive Systems

A freely available piece from Topics in Cognitive Science. With the keywords complexity; dynamical systems; extended cognition; consciousness – who could resist. In fact the whole issue is freely available from this relatively new title published under the auspices of the Cognitive Science Society. The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of…

Hayek’s Speculative Psychology, The Neuroscience of value Estimation, and the Basis of Normative Individualism

Here’s the opening paragraph of Don Ross’ paper from Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology. Philosophers of mind who re-visit Friedrich Hayek’s The Sensory Order almost sixty years after its publication should feel humbled, perhaps sheepish, on behalf of their discipline. The book is essentially an exercise in abstract speculative mental architecture construction, the kind of…

Lockean Social Epistemology

As mentioned in this paper, Locke and social epistemology is an improbable relation but  . . . Locke’s reputation as a sceptic regarding testimony, and the resultant mockery by epistemologists with social inclinations, is well known. C.A.J. Coady paints Locke as an extreme example of epistemological individualism; Frederick F. Schmitt argues that Locke regards testimony…

Chalmers’ Singularity

Check out the latest issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, a themed issue built around Dave Chalmers’ 2010 JCS paper  “The Singularity“. What happens when machines become more intelligent than humans? One view is that this event will be followed by an explosion to ever-greater levels of intelligence, as each generation of machines creates…

Clouding Conservatism

Yet more Oakeshottiana. Here is a brief review by Elizabeth Corey of The Meanings of Michael Oakeshott’s Conservatism (table of contents). Corey summarizes why Oakeshott’s supposed conservatism equally frustrates self-avowed conservatives and liberal critics: in the second excerpt she neatly captures the appeal of Oakeshott for someone such as myself. (See also another recent posting). In…