manwithoutqualities

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March 22, 2009Christian Jacob, complexity, computational intelligence, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, swarm, swarm behavior, swarm intelligence

Swarm Intelligence

Here’s an introduction to swarm intelligence featuring Christian Jacob – one a podcast from CBC Radio 1; the other a video from the Discovery Channel. Another string to Jacob’s bow is his swarm artwork.

March 19, 2009Laski, London School of Economics, LSE, oakeshott, time

Oakeshott in Time

With the complete digitization of Time Magazine’s archives I was able to find what must rank as Oakeshott’s highest profile and amusing press splash – Knowledge v. Pet Ideas – and this well before the essays collected under the banner of Rationalism in Politics. I love the footnote: Among Oakeshott’s publications is a treatise entitled A Guide to…

March 18, 2009particle swarm optimization, stigmergic, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior

Swarm fantasy

Swarm is a composite being of hundreds of thousands of bees driven by a human intelligence. Swarm is technically intangible, as his body is merely an aggregate of tiny forms, and he can fly through the air or assume any shape and size he desires. Swarm can also mentally influence the actions of other bees,…

March 13, 2009brain science, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, ginger campbell, patricia churchland, personal identity, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy on the radio, psychology

Pat Churchland Podcast Interview

Courtesy of Ginger Campbell’s excellent Brain Science Podcast website here is an interview with Pat Churchland (the interview begins after some preliminaries, so please be patient). An excellent idea is the inclusion of the interview transcript. I look forward to listening to the many other interviews. A great resource!

March 12, 2009consciousness, robotics, robots

They’re here!

Here is a nice collection of HD photographs of a plethora of robots from Boston.com. The diversity of uses is astonishing – from the banal to the exotic – they are ubiquitous. But let’s not get carried away and talk of consciousness.

March 11, 2009artificial intelligence, Bounds of Cognition, cognition, cognitive modeling, cognitive science, cognitive systems, cognitive systems research, collaboration, collective intentionality, complexity, computational intelligence, consciousness, david chalmers, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, emergence, epistemology, extended mind, situated cognition, social cognition, social epistemology, stigmergic, stigmergy, swarm intelligence

Top of the Pops (well relatively speaking)

Sad as it is, we were chuffed to discover that our co-authored paper is the 57th most popular paper in Chalmers’ MindPapers database out of a total of 18,477 papers.

March 11, 2009john pugh, liberal education, liverpool, philosophy, stanley fish

Liberal Education Revisited

A couple of months ago I posted a link to Stanley Fish’s NYT article bemoaning the corroding of liberal education. With the news of the closure of Liverpool’s philosophy department here is John Pugh echoing Fish.

March 2, 2009philosophers, wittgenstein

Young Wittgenstein

This photograph is featured in a recent NYT book review. Photos of Wittgenstein are few and far between so it was nice to see this one of the young Ludwig around 17 or 18 with the family. I also chanced upon the full version of Derek Jarman’s film which I couldn’t find on DVD. I…

March 2, 2009conversation, michael oakeshott, oakeshott, philosophy

Philosopher of Conversation

Here’s a piece from The Spectator written by, I suspect, John Casey. It looks like it’s dated 25 May 1985. Paul Franco gave it to me a few years ago and I’d folded it into a book and forgot about it. Click image a few times to enlarge.