Watching Bryan Magee and Tony Quinton discussing Spinoza (and Leibniz) reminded me of a piece I did several years ago that was very pantheistic in its conclusion. Here is the first half or so. There’s something horribly plausible about Ralph’s arguments, religion arising out of man’s unique awareness of his own mortality. . . . In…
Here is the into to Kristina’s article. In contemporary philosophy of science it has become a truism to claim that scientific knowledge is social knowledge. Yet there is a diversity of views about what is “social” in scientific inquiry and why it is of epistemic interest (Rolin, 2004). One approach to understanding the “social” in…
The always thoughtful and eloquent Keith Spera: here is his review of Presevation Hall’s latest, and a very Burkean assessment in the following quote: The Preservation Hall Jazz Band cannot, and should not, escape or avoid its esteemed and considerable legacy. But a respect for, and connection to, the past should not preclude looking forward. Music,…
Jeff Hawkins interview. Here’s what we do inside Grok: we build this 60,000-neuron neural network that emulates a very small part of one layer of the neocortex. It’s about a thousandth the size of a mouse brain and a millionth the size of a human brain. So: not super-intelligent, but we’re using the principle by…
I am really quite fatigued as my first working day draws to a close. I do not wish to suggest, however, that I am disheartened or depressed or defeated. For the first time in my life I have met the system face to face, fully determined to function within its context as an observer and…
Keynote talk by Andy for the 9th International Symposium of Cognition, Logic and Communication. Andy appears @ 11:57 active externalismAndy ClarkCognitionCognitive neuroscienceCognitive scienceconsciousnessEmbodied cognitionExtended MindExternalismneurosciencePerceptionphilosophical psychologyPhilosophy of mind
Paul Gerard interview. The Braiser: I fricken’ love anything that has to do with New Orleans; I lived there for a while. I think anyone who’s stayed there for a while gets homesick afterwards, and just gravitates towards anything relating to New Orleans. Paul Gerard: It’s so true. You know the song, “You Know What…
Yet more EM. Artificial intelligenceCognitionCognitive neuroscienceCognitive scienceCollective intelligencecollective intentionalitycomplexityconsciousnessdistributed cognitiondistributed knowledgeExtended MindExternalismPhilosophy of mindsituated cognitionsocial epistemology
The power team of Julian Kiverstein, Mirko Farina and Andy Clark have written this entry for Oxford Bibliographies Online. Andy ClarkArtificial intelligenceCognitionCognitive neuroscienceCognitive scienceconsciousnessEmbodied cognitionExtended MindExternalismPhilosophy of mindsituated cognition
This from Wired. During the 130 million years or so that ants have been around, evolution has tuned ant colony algorithms to deal with the variability and constraints set by specific environments. Ant colonies use dynamic networks of brief interactions to adjust to changing conditions. No individual ant knows what’s going on. Each ant just…
manwithoutqualities 