manwithoutqualities

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March 24, 2011cognitive modeling, cognitive science, computational intelligence, computational psychology, computationalism, connectionism, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, rumelhart

David Rumelhart (1942-2011)

Stanford University News New York Times I Programmer Rumelhart was enormously important in the 1980s in reviving this neural network approach to language and cognition Steven Pinker

March 15, 2011derek parfit, ethics, moral philosophy, on what matters, personal identity, reasons and persons, susan hurley

Derek Parfit’s latest book On What Matters is about to hit the shelves. I guess this must qualify as a major philosophical event if like me you were taken by the astounding philosophical imagination of Reasons and Persons. Below is a shot of Parfit at his dashing peak taken in Oxford by the late Susan…

March 13, 2011austrian economics, Bastiat, broken window fallacy, hayek, japan, Keynes, Larry Summers, steve horwitz, tsunamis

Broken Window Fallacy

The topic of economics is not within my usual ambit (I do retain a tangential epistemological interest) but it’s certainly timely and Steve Horwitz always brings an astringency of good sense (however unfashionable that might be) to the knee-jerk economic issues of the day. Because of my passionate interest in New Orleans Steve’s thesis has…

March 12, 2011cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, embodied cognition, embodiment, Joel Krueger, Lawrence Shapiro, music, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science

Doing things with music

Two items of note (at least for me) from the excellent Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences: great to see this journal flourishing. I recall a correspondence with an eminent emeritus professor of philosophy at McGill around 2000 who nearly had a coronary when I told him of my interest in phenomenology (he’s still with us…

March 10, 2011collaboration, collective intentionality, complex adaptive systems, complexity, computational intelligence, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior, swarm intelligence, Yang Chenghan

Stigmergic Simulations

Here are some terrific stigmergic simulations by architectural student Yang Chenghan that I chanced across: The first is a 3D simulation deploying 45-70 agents (source code) The second a 2D simulation deploying 20-30 agents (source code) Here are some great synthetic stigmergic stills Yang has created.

March 9, 2011brain, brain science, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, Eliminative Materialism, evolution, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, moral philosophy, mri, neural correlates, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, patricia churchland, paul churchland, philosophy of mind, value

Pat Churchland on the source of value

Another video (via David Livingstone Smith) of Pat Churchland plugging her and Paul’s forthcoming book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. This talk is part of the The Great Debate conference Can Science Tell Us Right From Wrong?

March 8, 2011causal theory of reference, Kripke, naming and necessity, philosophical logic, possible worlds, rigid designator, saul kripke, steve pyke

Kripke for beginners

Here’s a great post in the New York Times (via my chum David Livingstone Smith) on one of the most influential philosophers of recent times within the analytic tradition – the one and only Saul Kripke. My favourite Kripke quote: “It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably…

March 5, 2011david livingstone smith, dehumanization, ethics, evolution, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, genocide, less than human, moral philosophy, war

A Philosophy of Genocide’s Roots

My chum David Livingstone Smith’s latest book (that I have been trailing) has just been reviewed in the New York Times. The subject matter is as timely as ever and is a cracking read accessible for a general audience and an academic audience.

March 3, 2011bosanquet, bradley, british idealism, epistemology, idealism, metaphysics, personal identity, self, situated cognition, TH Green

British Idealism and the concept of the self

I don’t normally post conference calls or CFP but this conference has appeal to me. I did attend the Bradley Society conference in about 1997 at Harris Manchester hosted by Bill Mander and had a great time there. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Date: 27th – 29th August, 2013 Location: Harris Manchester College, Oxford Idealism dominated British philosophy during…

March 1, 2011brain, brain science, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, gary williams, Micah Allen, neural networks, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, plasticity, qualia, sociocognition

Consciousness, plasticity, and connectomics: the role of intersubjectivity in human cognition

Check out this just published paper by Micah Allen and Gary Williams in the open access journal Frontiers in Psychology. Consciousness is typically construed as being explainable purely in terms of either private, raw feels or higher-order, reflective representations. In contrast to this false dichotomy, we propose a new view of consciousness as an interactive,…

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