Noë reviews Plantinga’s latest book. from a naturalistic point of view, we have every reason to doubt that our cognitive faculties are reliable. Therefore we can’t seriously believe naturalism. For to believe it would be to have grounds for doubting the reliability of our own inclinations to believe it. Alvin Plantingaand NaturalismChristopher HitchensExistence of GodReligionWhere…
Here is a review article going back a few years in The New Yorker on Walter Benjamin‘s relationship to dope. The sessions were recorded in “protocols,” furnishing raw material for what Benjamin intended to be a major book on the philosophical and psychological implications of drug use. PhilosophyWalter Benjamin
Check out Joaquín Fuster’s recent paper: Only now, more than half a century after the publication of his theoretical book (Hayek, 1952), is the reaction to Hayek’s argument beginning to be heard. And it’s a positive reaction, now supported by facts. He used to say that without a theory the facts are silent. Now, belatedly reacting to…
Oliver Sacks is the test subject in looking at the effect of music on the brain. BrainElectroencephalographyMagnetic resonance imagingOliver Sacks
Anil Seth, Chris Frith and Barry Smith (of Birkbeck, not Buffalo!) outline the topography in a podcast. Anil SethBarry SmithChris FrithCognitionCognitive neuroscienceCognitive sciencecomplexityconsciousnessEmbodied cognitionMagnetic resonance imagingneurosciencePhilosophy of mindqualia
I want to give a plug to Ted Lewis’ new book Bak’s Sand Pile. Did the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, the massive power blackout of 2003, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Gulf oil spill of 2010 ‘just happen’-or were these shattering events foreseeable? Do such calamities in fact follow a…
Richard Menary’s long time coming The Extended Mind is reviewed here by Joseph Ulatowski. CognitionCognitive neuroscienceCognitive scienceEmbodied cognitionExtended MindneurosciencePhilosophy of mindqualia
Colin McGinn locates his position within philosophy of mind. Though not a fashionable position, I’m very sympathetic to it – and of course, it is a position that has much in common with Hayek. The “mysterianism” I advocate is really nothing more than the acknowledgment that human intelligence is a local, contingent, temporal, practical and…
Here is an excellent paper by Joshua Rust. Barry Smith (1997, p. 18) observes that ‘‘Hayek is at one with the connectionist tendency within contemporary cognitive science.’’ And at one level of description, Smith is correct. Friedrich Hayek’s question is, in part, a procedural one: by what mechanism does the mental order come to replicate…
Chalmers’ and Clark’s extended mind thesis cited in this article from an architecture and design publication. Turning to philosophy and robotics gives us a new insight into what might be going on. In 1998, A. Clark and D. Chalmers proposed the “extended mind” concept, where the workings of our mind actually extend beyond the brain…
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