Cognitive Science and FactCheck.org, or Why We (Still) Do What We Do The following article is culled from Annenberg Fact Check (if this is the sort of discussion you find interesting, why not check out the journal EPISTEME. Articles such as Alvin Goldman on the epistemic failure of the FBI regarding 9/11 and Roger Koppl on why…
The new issue of EPISTEME is now available. For a list of contents and abstracts please click here.
This is an article I culled from Scientific American.com. What struck me about this article is that it features the work of Joaquín Fuster, one of the very few first-order neuroscientists who appreciate Hayek’s proto-connectionism (the other being Edelman). Fuster really deserves to be better known within the philosophy of mind community – his writing is highly accessible. I thoroughly…
In the wake of Dennett and Dawkins, two more prominent names weigh in on atheism. This article from Salon.com I reproduce here because of annoying pop-up adverts. Also see David Berreby’s piece on Dawkins (Berreby happens to drop in a reference to Oakeshott – this Oakeshott fellow seems to be getting fashionable amongst bloggers). Readers might be interested in…
The September 7th issue of Science is a special issue devoted to social cognition: the table of contents found here. I reproduce the introduction “Living in Societies” by Caroline Ash, Gilbert Chin, Elizabeth Pennisi and Andrew Sugden. The appearance of this issue has prompted me to post the introduction to the special issue of social cognition…
For many the term “film” let alone “Hollywood film” can be uttered in the same breath as philosophy (the only instances I can think of right now are Mishima, Death in Venice and Performance – three films conspicuously missing from a list of ostensibly philosophical films: I have mentioned elsewhere that what was passes for philosophy is contentious). Anyway, there is a film…
This is just a banal and rather sad blogger’s observation. I’ve been getting several visitors who have been translating pages from English into Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian and other languages using Google Translation. I’m curious as to how pages translate – automated translations tend to generate a very awkward phraseology. That I aside, I…
So-called “performance artist” Stelarc whom I first discovered through Andy Clark’s Natural Born Cyborgs (reviewed here) has implanted a “third ear” in his own arm. Apparently the ear will have a microphone implanted to allow others to listen to what his extra ear picks up. It looks like an ear but will it function like…
A somewhat hurried Greenfield-Koch debate which I discovered on Peter Mandik’s excellent blog. I don’t think this standard debating format works well – in many respects it vulgarizes the topic. The full debate (75 minutes – 247MB or available in 15 minutes chunks) can be found on the Mind Science Foundation website.
This must be a first for any politician to publicly invoke Oakeshott. Of course we all know that Thatcher invoked Hayek. I have been assured by correspondents of mine in the know that it it highly unlikely that Howard has read any Oakeshott but that Howard “is a quick absorber of ideas he finds useful. He…
manwithoutqualities 