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,…
My published article is now available from here. Check out the full table of contents for this volume.
Here’s a singularity summit talk by Eric Baum. Baum is known to me as the author of What is Thought? and in particular his discussion of his notion of “The Hayek Machine” as set out in his “Toward a Model of Intelligence as an Economy of Agents” Machine Learning 35, pp. 155-185 (1999).
Check out the Editorial (and of course the full issue) for the special issue on Particle Swarm Optimization from the new journal Swarm Intelligence. This issue is edited by two of the most prominent luminaries in the field – Andries Engelbrecht and Jim Kennedy. The former is the author of Fundamentals of Computational Swarm Intelligence; the latter,…
An article from Silicon.com pitched at a general audience. I love the last photo caption: How long until robots are running off with someone’s wife?
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…
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…
Press release from MIT. Essentially, we want to rewind to 30 years ago and revisit some ideas that had gotten frozen,” he says, adding that the new group hopes to correct “fundamental mistakes” made in AI research over the years.
Swarm grandee Guy Theraulaz presents a lecture on Biological Principles of Swarm Intelligence. Other salient talks available on this site include: Evolutionary Algorithms by Adam Prügel-Bennett Dance evolution by Jeff Balogh, Gregg Dubbin, Michael Do Science, Technology, and Applications of Swarm Robotics by Dario Floreano The Mathematics of Emergence and Flocking by Stephen Smale Fuzzy Logic by Michael Berthold Differential Evolution and…
Over at Vitorino Ramos’ ever thoughtful blog is a post extolling the virtues of the “small”. The point is twofold: First, the superb detail afforded by the photographs that Vitorino has assembled shows a rather complexly “designed” creature – a design that belies the supposedly simple life-form that ants are typically taken to be. The…
manwithoutqualities 