Readers with some familiarity with the eclectic content found on this website will be aware that the humble ant features strongly. Here is an article that offers a brief and accessible discussion of an excellent symposium to be found in Behavioral Ecology that features Mark Moffett’s work. AntAnt colonyBehavioral EcologyLaurent KellerMark W. Moffett
Two reviews of Gerald Vision’s Re-Emergence: Locating Conscious Properties in a Material World By Philip Goff By Kevin Morris CognitionCognitive neuroscienceCognitive scienceColin McGinncomplexityDavid HumeEmergenceEmergentismMental propertyPhilosophy of mindPhilosophy of sciencePhysical propertyPhysicalismProperty dualismqualiaSamuel Alexander
Here’s an interesting article by psychologist Robert Stolorow and his son, Ben Stolorow, a jazz musician (thanks for the alert RS). Feel that existential angst . . . I can’t stand living, but I’m scared of dying, but Old Man River, he just keeps rolling along. —Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II African-American musicCognitive scienceHuman conditionphilosophical…
Staying with the literature theme of a few days ago and earlier today, here is another write up on Jonathan Gottschall’s new book and an article by JG himself here and a related review article of another book by John Gray here. E. O. WilsonJonathan GottschallJonathan HaidtLiteratureNew AtheismSolzhenitsynStorytelling
H/T to a kindred spirit “Infrequent literary reflections by an analytic philosopher” for bringing the slowly but surely growing secondary literature to my attention. Since it was through Kafka that my latent philosophical impulse was first generated, I’ve always wanted to write a piece on some aspect of his work. I have however been granted…
Programming the Global Brain Considering how we can improve our understanding and utilization of the emerging human-computer network constituting the global brain. (Here’s a previous post on this topic) Abraham Bernstein, Mark Klein, Thomas W. Malone New ways of combining networked humans and computers—whether they are called collective intelligence, social computing, or various other terms—are…
Good article from Adam Frank: At stake is a critical question living deep inside the heart of modern foundational physics: What are the limits of science? David Albert was having none of it. As he correctly points out: Where do the fields come from? Better yet: Where do the laws of quantum mechanics come from?…
Richard Symonds (with whom I’ve corresponded over the years) has been leading the “campaign” to keep Joad’s name alive (I first mentioned Joad about three years ago here). I paste in Geoff Thomas’ comment: Richard Symonds is keeping alive the name of a very significant figure in British culture and the popular understanding of philosophy.…
I first came across a reference to Eugène Marais in Andries Engelbrecht’s very excellent Computational Intelligence: An Introduction. See the links below for details about this highly unusual character. The Tragic Genius of Eugène Marais (The author, Conrad Reitz, very kindly shared some of his thoughts with me). The Soul of the White Ant Introduction by Keith Addison EUGÈNE Marais was a South African…
The intro from Jan Willem Lindemans’ paper: The philosophical foundations of Hayek’s works are not beyond dispute (Gray, 1984, Kukathas, 1989, Caldwell, 1992, Hutchison, 1992): was Hayek a rationalist or an empiricist; did he follow Kant or Hume, Mises or Popper? Difficulties arise because these questions touch upon social theory, political philosophy, methodology and epistemology.…
manwithoutqualities 