In a recent article in Dessent entitled “Who’s Afraid of Friedrich Hayek? The Obvious Truths and Mystical Fallacies of a Hero of the Right” Jesse Larner expresses his surprise that he finds Hayek to be “nowhere near as extreme as his ideological descendants” and “not the cynic I had braced for.” It is reassuring to know that…
A short review of Evan Thompson’s recent Mind in Life from Metapsychology online. I have commissioned a close-grained review essay for the Journal of Mind and Behavior – stay tuned.
Here’s an interesting take on the notion of extended mind from the always thoughtful Susannah Devitt. I look forward to reading the complete paper.
This paper by Naomi Rokotnitz from a recently held conference featuring Andy Clark.
According to Edge Dennett has had some second thoughts. Knowing what I do of Hayek’s philosophical psychology and his proto-connectionism, he may well approve of Dennett’s characterization. My mistake was that I had stopped the finite regress of homunculi at least one step too early! The general run of the cells that compose our bodies…
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,…
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
An article in the New York Times reports that philosophy enrollment in the US is significantly up. In an age of overly early specialization and technocratic training purely instrumental to the job market, this is reassuring. This said, I’m sure there are departments and courses that fit the profile of: “People sitting under trees and…
manwithoutqualities 