This book features a chapter by Andy Clark entitled: How to Qualify for a Cognitive Upgrade: Executive Control, Glass Ceilings, and the Limits of Simian Success. Here is the intro to the chapter:
10.1 Introduction
It is sometimes suggested that words and language form a kind of ‘cognitive niche’ (Clark, 1998, 2005, 2006, 2008; Chapter 4): an animal-built structure that productively transforms our cognitive capacities. But even if language cognitively empowers us in many deep and unobvious ways, it would be quite wrong to assume that such empowerment occurs in either a neural or an evolutionary vacuum. In evolutionary terms, we need to recognise the various precursors of our own prodigious skills at species-level selfscaffolding. In neural terms, we need to uncover the specific innovations that allow certain kinds of agents to benefit (humans massively, simians somewhat, hamsters not at all) from the empowering effects of exposure to a public linguistic edifice. What we need to understand is thus a delicate balancing act between extra-neural and neural innovation, such that the public material structures of language are enabled (in some beings and not in others) to play significant cognitive roles. In the present chapter, I first lay out a few of the ways in which language may indeed act as a potent form of cognitive scaffolding. I then briefly rehearse the results of a series of elegant comparative and developmental studies (summarised in McGonigle and Chalmers [2006]) that suggest a surprising amount of evolutionary continuity between human and simian (squirrel monkey) subjects in respect of some of the key ‘building block’ skills that enable this potent ‘mind-tool’ (Dennett, 2000) to emerge. I end by asking, ‘What then limits simian success?’
A lot of scientists study the behavior of insect’s colony like ants, wasps and bees. Through these researches, it is possible to establish patterns used by a group of insects and apply these patterns in other domains. In this paper it will be showed the use of stigmergy in a rescue situation using the RoboCup Rescue simulator. We performed a set of experiments using a metaphor based on the behavior of an ant colony, where the communication between agents is done through the environment. We measured the performance of the ant-based algorithm, expecting to figure out the feasibility of using swarm intelligence in a rescue situation. We compared the results of using stigmergy against a multiagent system based on direct messages. The results showed that the use of stigmergy can outperform the use of direct messages.
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm
There’s a killer on the road
His brain is squirmin’ like a toad
Take a long holiday
Let your children play
If ya give this man a ride
Sweet memory will die
Killer on the road, yeah
Girl ya gotta love your man
Girl ya gotta love your man
Take him by the hand
Make him understand
The world on you depends
Our life will never end
Gotta love your man, yeah
Yeah!
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Idealists and realists were not as antagonistic toward each other as is commonly thought. Harold Joachim, for example, submitted the second chapter of The Nature of Truth to his “friend Bertrand Russell” before the book was published. R. G. Collingwood was a respected figure internationally the conversation of mankind and a very close friend and godfather to the son of the realist E. F. Carritt. Even the younger generation of philosophers opposed to idealism admired Collingwood’s work. A. J. Ayer, against whom Collingwood directed much of An Essay on Metaphysics in an attack on logical positivism, admired his older colleague. Ayer maintained that his esteem for Collingwood came in the 1930s. He admired the style of all of Collingwood’s books but was particularly impressed by the application of his theory of absolute presuppositions in The Idea of Nature Ayer devoted a chapter to Collingwood in his Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, alongside Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, Hilary Putnam, and W. V. O. Quine.
Gilbert Ryle, Ayer’s tutor and Collingwood’s successor to the Waynflete chair of metaphysical philosophy, published The Concept of Mind in 1949. Both Ryle and the British idealists were anti-Cartesian. Ryle wanted to deny the mind and body dualism, which was the received orthodoxy. Ryle called it “the ghost in the machine.” Like Oakeshott, Ryle maintained that it is a category error to conjoin or disjoin statements about mental and physical processes as if they are of the same logical type or as if they are species of a genus called experience. The mind cannot be separated from its “overt acts and utterances.” Ryle was more than generous in attributing to his idealist predecessor a significant role in exorcising the ghost in the machine.
I want to give a plug to my chum Andrew Irvine’s play Socrates on Trial. Of perennial interest it is a way of communicating important ideas in an accessible but compelling way.
Here is a dedicated page with video footage and reviews.
Ed Feser has another terrific earlier posting on Steely Dan (I recently brought attention to this one). Ed engages with Roger Scruton’s analysis of “popular” music.
In older musical traditions, the focus was on the music itself, which had only a contingent relationship to the performer even when the performer was the one who composed it . . . Contrast here the tradition of classical performance, in which the singer is the servant of the music, hiding behind the notes that he produces.
Whatever else is right about Scruton’s analysis there are counter-examples from the classic world. Think about the big personalities such as Furtwängler, Karajan, Solti and Rattle, musicians such as Martha Argerich and Jacqueline du Pré, or singers such as Fischer-Dieskau, Callas, Pavarotti, Schwarzkopf and many more besides. The singer/musician may well be the servant to the music, but in these cases what gives them the “star” quality is that it their personality is very much part and parcel of the package. And then there is Louis Armstrong who not only codified Jazz but whose personality was intertwined with the music as was Fat’s Domino . . . their early recordings were merely performances in front of a microphone. And much of the Frank Zappa recorded canon was first and foremost culled from live performances.
Ed writes:
Scruton argues that the contemporary pop star plays a quasi-religious social function, like the totem animal of a primitive tribe. The most obvious evidence for this claim is the cult-like quality devotion to pop stars and groups can take on. A fan’s sense of identity can become so associated with the group or pop star to which he is devoted that interest in other groups or singers is excluded, attacks on the group or pop star are taken as attacks on the fan himself, and the community of fans is regarded as a kind of extension of the pop group, to which the community is “united” as if mystically.
This seems to me as applicable to some quarters in classical music. Try talking to a Wagnerian about their favourite singers and conductors; try engaging with someone in the primary queue who has been a regular Promenader for the last 40 years . . .
Roger, a tutor of mine eons ago, is always well worth reading, as is Ed. Check out the other reflections by Ed that caught my eye:
Speaking of Martinis, here is Buñuel’s recipe for a dry martini from The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
and from his autobiography My Last Breath:
To provoke, or sustain, a reverie in a bar, you have to drink English gin, especially in the form of the dry martini. To be frank, given the primordial role in my life played by the dry martini, I think I really ought to give it at least a page. Like all cocktails, the martini, composed essentially of gin and a few drops of Noilly Prat, seems to have been an American invention. Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggest simply allowing a ray of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin. At a certain period in America it was said that the making of a dry martini should resemble the Immaculate Conception, for, as Saint Thomas Aquinas once noted, the generative power of the Holy Ghost pierced the Virgin’s hymen “like a ray of sunlight through a window-leaving it unbroken.”
Another crucial recommendation is that the ice be so cold and hard that it won’t melt, since nothing’s worse than a watery martini. For those who are still with me, let me give you my personal recipe, the fruit of long experimentation and guaranteed to produce perfect results. The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients-glasses, gin, and shaker-in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about twenty degrees below zero (centigrade). Don’t take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Stir it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, stir it again, and serve.
Speaking of booze, Roger of course has written on wine: Ed and I shared a bottle of Laphroaig when we attended a SABE meeting in San Diego a couple of years back.
Anyway, here is Ed’s full listing of “pop” cultural reflections, but I’d encourage you to delve deeper into Ed’s eclectic, polemical and very thoughtful blog.
Here is a pre-published version of Francis Heylighen’s paper from JCS
Abstract:
The present paper criticizes Chalmers’s discussion of the Singularity, viewed as the emergence of a superhuman intelligence via the self-amplifying development of artificial intelligence. The situated and embodied view of cognition rejects the notion that intelligence could arise in a closed ‘brain-in-a-vat’ system, because intelligence is rooted in a high-bandwidth, sensory-motor interaction with the outside world. Instead, it is proposed that superhuman intelligence can emerge only in a distributed fashion, in the form of a self-organizing network of humans, computers, and other technologies: the ‘Global Brain’.
manwithoutqualities 