manwithoutqualities

Browse by:

August 14, 2008cognitive science, criminal verdicts, csi, episteme, epistemology, Forbes, forensic science, forensics, John Tierney, justice, new york times, Radley Balko, Roger Koppl, social epistemology

Bad science story picked up the NYT

The Roger Koppl story that I’ve been plugging for a few months has been picked up by the New York Times.

August 14, 2008hayek, Kevin Rudd, Oliver Hartwich, The Road to Serfdom

The Caricatured Hayek

There’s an article in The Australian taking Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to task for his rather crude take on Hayek. Oliver Hartwich does a good job in rebutting Rudd’s views. Of course we expect the vulgarization of first-order thinkers by politicians. There are still many in academic circles who fall into the same stance when it comes…

August 13, 2008document repositories, Scribd

Scribd platform

I want to give a plug to the Scribd platform. I have papers listed with several document repositories and none are as flexible, easy to negotiate and as “good looking” as Scribd. It has some nice features including tracking traffic for each document and the ability to leave comments (which I’ve chosen to disable). I would highly…

August 12, 2008criminal verdicts, csi, epistemology, Forbes, forensics, Radley Balko, Roger Koppl, slate, social epistemology, testimony

Follow up to: What’s Wrong With CSI

Here’s an article in Slate “hot off the press” by Roger Koppl and Radley Balko. It makes for a nice follow up to the earlier Forbes story (and Koppl article) I drew attention to.

August 12, 2008Andy Clark, cognitive science, consciousness, cyborgs, distributed knowledge, embodiment, emergence, extended mind, Heidegger, neurophilosophy, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, psychology

Andy Clark and Cyborgs

Fans of the work of Andy Clark and in particular his views on cyborgs will be pleased to note that his writing about cyborgs is the focus of a special issue of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.

August 12, 2008complexity, Dover Trial, epistemology, evidence, evolution, intelligent design, philosophy of science, relativism, science, science wars, social constructivism, social epistemology, sociology, Steve Fuller

Steve Fuller on the Dover Trial

Here is a post on John Wilkins’ Evolving Thoughts bog that picks up on Sahotra Sarkar’s review of Steve Fuller’s latest book in the Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. The conflict between Fuller and his critics is sure run and run with ever increasing bitterness. A minor point. Sarkar writes that: “He [Fuller] is widely credited…

August 10, 2008chess, cognition, cognitive science, connectionism, consciousness, memory, philosophy of mind

The Expert Mind

There’s a nice article in Scientific American entitled “The Expert Mind: Studies of the mental processes of chess grandmasters have revealed clues to how people become experts in other fields as well.” What struck me was the excerpt below which seems to be grist for the connectionist mill in that the expert is not confronted…

August 9, 20081, criminal verdicts, csi, DNA, Economics, episteme, epistemology, evidence, fbi, Forbes, forensic science, forensics, justice, Roger Koppl, social epistemology, testimony

What’s Wrong With CSI

I’ve had several requests to make this recent article available despite it still being freely available on the Forbes site (I know there have been some annoying pop-up advertisement windows.) Anyway, check out Roger’s co-authored article for EPISTEME on this topic: Epistemics for Forensics. Forensic evidence doesn’t always tell the truth. Forensic evidence is foolproof,…

August 8, 2008artificial intelligence, stigmergy, swarm intelligence

Swarm Robotics

Here is a BBC report from A.I. XI

August 4, 2008identity, philosophy of social science, social cognition, social constructivism, social epistemology, social identity, social ontology, sociocognition

Social Indentity

As usual, Dan Little has posted some thoughtful reflections on the multifarious tributaries that feed into the complex that is social identity. It brings to mind a recent correspondence I had with someone who was adamant that I call them by their “new” name (legally changed by deed poll), someone who I happened to know under their birth…