Wonderful to see Douglas Hofstadter’s book I Am a Strange Loop win an LA Times Book Award. What passess as the literati these days needs to be exposed to a mind that is highly cultured, literary and that has unforced conceptual depth. See the Scientific American and the JASSS reviews from last year. Douglas Hofstadter
Pardon the title of this posting but it’s the best I can do. A mini-interview in the New Scientist (April 19-25) caught my eye. Jill Bolte Taylor’s story gives credence to the network model of cognitive architecture that postulates that cognitive representations consist of widely distributed networks of cortical neurons. Cognitive functions, namely perception, attention, memory, language,…
Two of my passions – ballet and brain – caught my eye in the unlikely guise of a review and preview of Wayne McGregor’s Entity at Sadler’s Wells. Rather than McGregor’s ideas being filtered through a faintly comprehending dance journalist: Technology fiend McGregor is engaged on a continuing investigation into brain and body. The ultimate goal is to…
With the film Iron Man about to be released, the Hollywood publicity machine has hit full stride. Despite the symbiotic relationship of Hollywood to glossy magazine culture, there are occasionally some interesting articles to be found. One such article is the May edition of Popular Science. What’s being discussed is Exoskeleton technology – something that has…
Thank you Raymond Tallis for this well needed intellectual astringent. raymond tallis
Vol.28 No 3. Summer 2007 Vol.28 No 4. Autumn 2007 Why History Matters: Associations and Causal Judgment in Hume and Cognitive Science. Mark Collier, University of Minnesota, Morris The Phenomenology of Freedom. Tomis Kapitan, Northern Illinois University Process, Quantum Coherence, and the Stream of Consciousness. Keith A. Choquette, Brockton, Massachusetts The Frontal Feedback Model of…
This past Monday I presented a talk to the Advanced Seminar Program at the Chicago-based Zygon Center for Religion and Science and editorial home of the journal Zygon: Journal of Science & Religion. My host was Zygon’s editor Phil Hefner. The theme of this year’s seminar was The ‘Hard Problem’ – Consciousness, Experience, and Mind – my talk dealt…
I read on Dave Chalmers’ weblog that he’s written the preface to Andy Clark’s forthcoming Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension. It’s very exciting news that a) there is a new book by Clark, perhaps the best stylist around and that b) Chalmers (and Clark) have returned to considering their thesis of active externalism ten years after…
I chanced upon this rather turgid article that claims there is now a new sub genre of literature. The writer coins the label “Neuronarratives” to denote works of fiction that incorporate advances in cognitive studies. The writer takes the “two cultures” debate as the organizing theme in the two novels under consideration. One of the books…
Here is the fully published special issue of Cognitive Systems Research Volume 9, Issues 1-2, March 2008 2. Introduction to the special issue “Perspectives on Social Cognition” Cognitive Systems Research, Volume 9, Issues 1-2, March 2008, Pages 1-4 Leslie Marsh and Christian Onof 3. Functionalism and mental boundaries Cognitive Systems Research, Volume 9, Issues…
manwithoutqualities 