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Momento’s Revenge

I’ve read just about everything by Andy Clark – as I’ve said several times before he is a superb stylist and is philosophy at its most lively. Some years back I read his paper Memento’s Revenge: Objections and Replies to the Extended Mind. I don’t recall having seen the film that Andy references in his paper;…

Hayek Interview

Here is a transcript of a 15.25-hour interview completed under the auspices of the UCLA Oral History Program and the Pacific Academy of Advanced Studies. I haven’t read the piece so I can’t vouch for its quality (I don’t recognise the interviewers). Anyway, one would hope that there will be some interest within the 1,046…

The Metaphysics of Mind

This past weekend I attended the Timothy Sprigge Memorial Conference (see link to obituary by Jane O’Grady who was in attendence). I met Sprigge in 1997 at the Bradley conference at Harris-Manchester College Oxford, a time when I was very interested in the idealists. Funny how philosophical changes come and go – Sprigge, ever the…

Swarm cognition

Here is a terrific presentation entitled  “Macrotermes as models of swarm cognition” by Scott Turner. He writes: This presentation was given at the Workshop on Research Efforts and Future Directions in Neuroergonomics and Neuromorphics sponsored by the US Army Research Office on 23-25 October 2007 in College Park Maryland. The presentation outlines the developing theme…

Stigmergy Wiki

True to the spirit of stigmergy I was pleased to learn of a wiki dedicated to all things stigmergical – StigmergyLive.   

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.

Fable of the Bees

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…

Studies in Emergent Order

I want to bring your attention to the first issue of the on-line journal Studies in Emergent Order (papers are freely available). I was privileged to attend the recent conference associated with the Journal. A more eclectic and interesting group one couldn’t hope to find. To listen to and chat with Gus diZerega, David Emanuel…

The Other Side of Hayek

Stephen Smoliar has a post today that refers to Hayek’s The Sensory Order. I’m particularly pleased to hear that Smoliar’s sometime-colleague Brian Arthur holds Hayek in high regard. Coming from Arthur, that is high praise indeed. Smoliar also writes: Edelman himself does not appear to have acknowledged Hayek’s work, but this is entirely understandable. I’m pleased to…