The last, but by no means least, paper from the CSR EM issue. Check out Mirko Farina’s review of Nivedita’s co-edited book Perception, Action, and Consciousness: Sensorimotor Dyamics and two Visual Systems.
Stigmergy 3.0: some more abstracts
Uncorrected in press
Cognitive Stigmergy: A Study of Emergence in Small-Group Social Networks – Ted G. Lewis
Emergence in Stigmergic and Complex Adaptive Systems: A Formal Discrete Event Systems Perspective – Saurabh Mittal
Stigmergic self-organization and the improvisation of Ushahidi – Janet Marsden
Whatever Next? Predictive Brains, Situated Agents, and the Future of Cognitive Science
Coming soon in Behavioral and Brain Sciences – a target article by Andy Clark:
Abstract: Brains, it has recently been argued, are essentially prediction machines. They are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with top-down expectations or predictions. This is achieved using a hierarchical generative model that aims to minimize prediction error within a bidirectional cascade of cortical processing. Such accounts offer a unifying model of perception and action, illuminate the functional role of attention, and may neatly capture the special contribution of cortical processing to adaptive success. The paper critically examines this ‘hierarchical prediction machine’ approach, concluding that it offers the best clue yet to the shape of a unified science of mind and action. Sections 1 and 2 lay out the key elements and implications of the approach. Section 3 explores a variety of pitfalls and challenges, spanning the evidential, the methodological, and the more properly conceptual. The paper ends (sections 4 and 5) by asking how such approaches might impact our more general vision of mind, experience, and agency.
Keywords: Action, attention, Bayesian brain, expectation, generative model, hierarchy, perception, precision, predictive coding, prediction, prediction error, top-down.
Cognitive Spread: Under What Conditions Does the Mind Extend Beyond the Body?
This from the European Journal of Philosophy. Unfortunately, the citation –
Fisher, J. (2009), ‘Critical Notice of The Bounds of Cognition’, Journal of Mind and Brain, 29: 345–57.
should be:
Fisher, J. (2008). ‘Critical Notice for The Bounds of Cognition’, Journal of Mind and Behavior, 29: 345-357.
Recognizing group cognition
The penultimate paper to the CSR EM issue by the super team of Theiner, Allen and Goldstone.
Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action
Glowing review of Bengson and Moffett’s edited book: edited works are very difficult to assess and often suffer from being uneven in quality. But as the reviewer says: “The wealth of its perspectives and accounts is not merely a blessing but also a nightmare for the reviewer.” So, nice one Marc!
The Legacy of Francisco Varela
Here is a video piece commemorating a decade since Varela’s passing with some lovely footage of him speaking. Though it’s titled as part 1, I can’t find the subsequent parts and I can’t find anything on the associated website.
Discussion of Turing Test
A discussion on the BBC World Service (H/T to David Livingston Smith).
Stigmergy 3.0: From Ants to Economies
Marge and my intro now available as an uncorrected proof. Stay tuned for the rest of the papers comprising this special issue.
According to Andy Clark “[M]uch of what goes on in the complex world of humans, may thus, somewhat surprisingly, be understood in terms of so-called stigmergic algorithms” (Clark, 1996, p. 279; 1997, p. 186). Pierre-Paul Grassé, the brilliant mind who first conceptualized the notion probably wouldn’t disagree (Grassé, 1959). Grassé was as much a zoologist as he was an entomologist. Under his editorship the monumental (17-volume) Traité de Zoologie, Anatomie, Systématique, Biologie was guided.
Antifoundationalist in spite of himself?
Here’s a review of Aryeh Botwinick’s recent book Michael Oakeshott’s Skepticism by my co-editor Paul Franco. Here is the opening salvo:
This is a strange book. From the title, one might expect that it would take up Oakeshott’s complicated understanding and deployment of skepticism throughout his philosophical career; perhaps also his relationship to such favorite skeptical authors as Montaigne, Hobbes, Pascal, Hume, and F. H. Bradley. But Aryeh Botwinick has something else in mind in his book; something both more ambitious and less satisfying. Instead of providing a detailed analysis of Oakeshott’s own views on and uses of skepticism, Botwinick uses Oakeshott to illustrate a larger thesis about how skepticism—which he construes largely in terms of a radical antifoundationalism—issues in a profoundly religious or mystical view of the world. This is not an uninteresting thesis, but whether it captures what is most important and distinctive about Oakeshott’s skepticism or his philosophy in general is doubtful.
manwithoutqualities 