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…
Here’s a fascinating article via a Prague-based (Charles University) neuroscientist and psychologist correspondent of mine Petr Bob. The article of course presupposes familiarity with Kafka’s writings and diaries. Here’s an excerpt from the article – the full article is freely available: What relevance do the neurobiological studies have to Kafka’s writings? Kafka deliberately scheduled his…
Check out the papers made available in advance of Richard Brown’s wonderful Consciousness Online project. Once again, a pretty impressive lineup.
Via Pete Mandik at Brain Hammer here is a rather snippy review by Raymond Tallis in the WSJ on V. S. Ramachandran’s latest which just yesterday I was leafing through. Is this the opening salvo of a slanging match akin to the APA Eastern Division meeting a few years back with Dennett vs. Bennett and Hacker? The…
Some books to look out for in 2011: Also Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science (shame about the cringe-making subtitle that has all the hyperbolic clichés “toward,” “new” and that old favourite “paradigm.”) Neuromania: On the limits of brain science
Yet another installment on mind in the NYT – this time from the highly distinguished and very influential Tyler Burge.
Speaking of Andy Clark and Alva Noë in the previous posting, here is Noë writing for NPR set to continue in another installment.
A thumbnail overview of consciousness by Alison Gopnik in Slate. alison gopnik
Here is an interview conducted by Howard Rheingold, as he says motivated by Andy’s Natural-Born Cyborgs. Note Andy’s reference to stigmergic (swarm) behavior though he doesn’t actually use the term. (Via David Livingstone Smith and Mirko Farina).
Check out the ms of Colin Klein’s critical notice (forthcoming in Journal of Mind and Behavior) of Rob Rupert, something I’ve been trailing for some time.
manwithoutqualities 