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AI as applied philosophy

Here’s a snappy piece by Alva Noë on man vs. machine. Is the ant smart? Or stupid? Maybe neither. Or, most intriguingly of all, maybe it is both? Is there an experimentum crucis that we might perform to settle a question like this once and for all? No. Intelligence isn’t like that. It isn’t something that…

Noë: Does Thinking Happen In The Brain?

Speaking of Andy Clark and Alva Noë in the previous posting, here is Noë writing for NPR set to continue in another installment.

Andy Clark in the New York Times

After some very middling opinion articles in this forum we have Andy Clark who is both a superb stylist and actually has interesting things to say. The title of the piece echos Alva Noë’s recent Out of Our Heads. Andy references some great images recently featured in the NYT that I was tempted to say something…

Cognitive Science Research: Extended Mind Themed Issue

Here is my introduction to the themed issue of Cognitive Systems Research. The full collection is now available here.

Extended Mind (Yet Again)

The articles comprising the themed issue of Cognitive Systems Research are now available from the publisher’s Articles in Press page. Note from Elsevier: The section “Articles in Press” contains peer reviewed accepted articles to be published in this journal. When the final article is assigned to an issue of the journal, the “Article in Press”…

Mind in Life

I’ve just completed reading Evan Thompson’s Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, a work which I heartily endorse as the best statement yet of the enactivist theory of mind. I especially like his taking on the philosopher’s zombie and his chapter on Empathy and Enculturation. Last, but by no means least,…

The Phenomenal Qualities Project

I want to bring your attention to The Phenomenal Qualities Project. With a Whose Who of theorists involved, it promises to offer a wonderful forum for ecumenical discussion: Objectives: There are four main objectives. To investigate a set of fundamental questions concerning phenomenal qualities – such as the colours, sounds and so on, of which we…

Closer to Truth: Consciousness

I’m pleased to have discovered a superb website that accompanies the PBS series Closer to Truth. The definitive series on the latest advances in brain, mind, free will, personal identity, alien intelligence, parapsychology, afterlife, and brain-mind critical thinking. Interviewer Robert Lawrence Kuhn does a super job of guiding the discussion for a lay audience and pretty…

Extended hype?

Galen Strawson, while thinking there is much to be said for non-Cartesianism, doesn’t think that the radical turn taken by the extended mind hypothesis, is fruitful nor indeed really all that new. Stay tuned for an excellent review by Chris Onof of Strawson’s Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does physicalism entail panpsychism? in The Journal…

Noë on Clark

Noë’s Trends in Cognitive Sciences review “Extending our view of mind” of Clark’s Supersizing the Mind is now online (pay-per-view unless of course your university subscribes).