Leiter reports on the passing of Julius Moravcsik. I recall Moravcsik’s work on Aristotle’s metaphysics as being a model of clarity and being informed by recent philosophy of mind. A top-draw philosopher who published because he had something to say; not because he liked the “sound of his own voice”. Click here for a bio-sketch. Julius…
The BBC has been running a series of articles on Turing. For those of us who often discuss the conceptual aspects of liberty through the great works of social and political philosophy, we should stop and think about how our liberty was, to a great extent, preserved by Alan Turing. According to Winston Churchill, Turing…
The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Anthony Grayling’s article Don’t dismiss dishonesty, it can be virtuous takes wing from two law lecturer’s research (no citation given), who according to Grayling, say “that they have found that there is no consensus in our society about what honesty is.” Grayling’s thesis, as interesting…
MICHAEL OAKESHOTT ASSOCIATION BAYLOR UNIVERSITY WACO, TEXAS NOVEMBER 12-14, 2009 THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2009 6:30 PM Check-in—Foyer of Armstrong Browning Library 7:00 PM Dinner in Cox Reception Hall 7:45-9:00 Address—Timothy Fuller FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2009 8:30-9:00 Coffee service 9:00 -10:15 Address—Roger Scruton: “Politics and Conversation” 10:30-12:00 Panel 1: Oakeshott and Strauss…
I came across a “review” of The Lives of Ants by Keller and Gordon. The book seems to have been very well received across several publications. Here is the Economist‘s “review” kindly sent to me by Shannon Selin. This pheromone-driven behaviour means that although single ants are not clever, collectively they are capable of complex…
Dov must surely have intended “stigmergy”! David McFarland certainly does: pp. 166, 178, 198. I hope this is picked up for the hardcopy review of McFarland’s Guilty Robots, Happy Dogs: The Question of Alien Minds. Robots can be simply reactive to certain elements of their environment; they can demonstrate ‘stigmercy’, or ‘[t]he production of behavior…
Another reminder: check out the special themed EPISTEME issue edited by Igor Douven.
Telling aspect to this article: “Is perception consciousness? The ability to understand that somebody has a goal, is that consciousness?” he asked. “These kinds of questions, we will be able to ask with much more precision because we can have a test bed, this robot, or zombie, that we can use to implement things,” he…
I want to bring your attention to two superb reviews on the work of Evan Thompson and Galen Strawson. These very thoughtful reviews are not space fillers nor point scoring exercises, but represent a close engagement with the material. If you would like a copy of either review please don’t hesitate to get in touch with…
Here is a characteristically lucid piece by Ken Minogue on Oakeshott’s supposed conservatism. It should be noted that conservatism as Oakeshott understood it, is an anathema to “conservatism” understood in the American context. I take the view that these the terms are not at all helpful and are, for the most part, vulgarized. Oakeshott was…
manwithoutqualities 