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.
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.
Ron Chrisley has just been sent me a link to an article that features excerpts of an interview with him in the Australian science magazine Cosmos. The article “Dawn of the Robots” offers a nice overview of the conceptual problems faced by robotics and the state of the art – all wrapped up in the…
Now it is becoming clear that group decisions are also extremely valuable for the success of social animals, such as ants, bees, birds and dolphins. And those animals may have a thing or two to teach people about collective decision-making. There’s an article in the Economist entitled “Decisions, decisions: What people can learn from how social…
I want to give an early plug for Rob Rupert’s forthcoming book Cognitive Systems and the Extended Mind. Though I haven’t read the book, I have read pretty much everything else Rob has written. Rob is one of the most serious-minded and one of the most talented philosophers around. Rob doesn’t merely crank out “clever” stuff…
Hot on the heels of Andy Clark’s Supersizing the Mind comes yet another “extended mind” type book with a colorful title Out of Our Heads, the writer Alva Noë. Noë is one of the sharpest guys around – his last book Action in Perception has established itself as a recent classic. Great to see the…
Jerry Fodor reviews Andy Clark’s Supersizing the Mind in the London Review of Books. Dave Chalmers responds on his blog.
Here’s an article that talks about using mechanical drones to efficiently monitor the vast area that is Australia’s bush fire zone. The article mentions Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and stigmergy – two notions that are of particular interest to my work. The article: Learning from birds to study fires on the fly
The Brain: How Google Is Making Us Smarter Humans are “natural-born cyborgs,” and the Internet is our giant “extended mind.” Science journalist Carl Zimmer writes about the extended mind thesis in the latest issue of Discover. Whatever one might think about the Clark-Chalmers argument, Zimmer offers a well-needed corrective to the recent rash of articles…
The BBC are broadcasting a two-part programme on swarm behaviour. It’s worth checking it out for the terrific footage – not having had the sound on, I don’t know if anything conceptually interesting is discussed. I will revisit the programme with sound soon. Click here to view part 1.
If you’ve ever heard the term “extended mind” and thought it denoted some sort of hocus pocus, then this recording will set you straight. Zoe Drayson of Bristol University has recorded a superb overview of the notion and the ethical implications arising from it. Zoe’s motivation for coming to this multidisciplinary literature had resonance for…