EPISTEME ’12 coming up very soon.
Epistemological Problems of Privacy and Secrecy
EPISTEME ’12 coming up very soon.
Science, the Market and Iterative Knowledge
The second paper co-authored with Dave Hardwick has now been published in Studies in Emergent Order:
Abstract: In a recent paper (Hardwick & Marsh, in press) we examine the recent tensions between the two broadly successful spontaneous orders, namely the Market and Science. We argued for an epistemic pluralism, the view that freedom and liberty (indeed the very concept of liberalism and civil society) exists at the nexus of a manifold of spontaneous forces, and that no single epistemic system should dominate. We also briefly introduced the concept of “iterative” knowledge to characterize the essentially dynamic nature of scientific knowledge. Herein lies a tension. The Market (and perhaps the prevailing culture at large) sees scientific knowledge in cumulative terms, that is, progressing to a conclusion in a linear fashion. This relatively static understanding of medical science as it relates to pharmaceutical studies can have a corrosive effect on the practice of medicine and ultimately, we believe, on the proper functioning of the market itself. In this paper we examine this tension in much closer detail by focusing upon the demands of the market, specifically the pharmaceutical industry, and the science upon which it is based. In other words, we expound upon a clash of epistemic value – one (science) that sees knowledge as essentially iterative (dynamic yet tentative) and the other (the Market) that harvests conclusive scientific knowledge (ostensibly as a fixed and firm commodity) functional to its own interests. Clinical Trials that are sharply focused with precisely determined deliverables often manifest this tension in the sharpest of relief. As a means of recovering drug development and testing costs, conclusive assessment is required to avoid creating serious financial problems for the companies themselves not to mention issues in the public interest.
The Goldilocks problem and extended cognition
Since I’m about to submit another themed issue of Cognitive Systems Research I thought I’d give a plug to the papers from the last CSR “Extended Mind” issue I edited some two months ago. First up is Dan Weiskopf’s paper:
According to the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC), parts of the extrabodily world can constitute cognitive operations. I argue that the debate over HEC should be framed as a debate over the location and bounds of cognitive systems. The “Goldilocks problem” is how to demarcate these systems in a way that is neither too restrictive nor too permissive. I lay out a view of systems demarcation on which cognitive systems are sets of mechanisms for producing cognitive processes that are bounded by transducers and effectors: structures that turn physical stimuli into representations, and representations into physical effects. I show how the transducer–effector view can stop the problem of uncontrolled cognitive spreading that faces HEC, and illustrate its advantages relative to other views of system individuation. Finally, I argue that demarcating systems by transducers and effectors is not question-begging in the context of a debate over HEC.
Is external memory memory? Biological memory and extended mind
New EM paper by Kourken Michaelian published in Consciousness and Cognition.
Brain (call) box
Some minor amusement from Der Spiegel. (H/T to Phil Hefner for this).
A liberal arts education
This Oakeshott reference from Colorado College’s website, notable because many so-called “liberal” arts colleges are only nominally “liberal” in the Oakeshottian sense. Check out Oakeshott’s essay “A Place of Learning” and other essays of his from The Voice of Liberal Learning. Paul Franco has written an essay for the “Companion” entitled “Un Début dans la Vie Humaine: Michael Oakeshott on Education“.
Endless conversation
It’s not just talk. It’s “an endless unrehearsed intellectual adventure,” the British philosopher Michael Oakeshott told a crowd at the college in 1975 during a week-long visit that left him delighted and impressed by the faculty, the students, and the magnificent setting.
It’s a conversation, Oakeshott said, “in which, in imagination, we enter into a variety of modes of understanding the world and ourselves.” Here, he saw unlimited opportunities to learn and to reflect on learning. This is the tradition you’ll draw upon as you navigate this place of learning, block by block.
Spend an intense three and a half weeks reading Shakespeare, then another pondering the social value of video games, then perhaps another examining RNA with a professor who shares the joy of a science-glimpse into what makes us human. You’ll write, you’ll read, you’ll paint or sing or calculate or contemplate. You’ll take a deep breath and at some point it will all make sense. You’re learning to understand, and you know it’s a lifelong conversation.
In Praise of Reason
The Zombie Within
Alva Noë’s latest musings.
Plato to Domino
It’s been exactly five years since this “blog” began. So I thought I’d mark the occasion with an unlikely pairing – Plato and “Fats” Domino, the latter arguably the earliest pioneer of what we have come to recognize as rock ‘n roll.
Eldridge Cleaver or somebody said that, with rock, the blacks gave the middle class whites back their bodies, put their minds and bodies into it. – John Lennon
Music Making History: “Africa Meets Europe in the United States of the Blues” by William L. Benzon
I don’t think we are dealing with a simple matter of rejecting sexuality. It is a more pervasive rejection of the body. Consider:
Even the greatest Western music, on the order of Bach and Mozart and Beethoven, was spiritual rather than physical. The mind-body split that defined Western culture was in its music as well. When you felt transported by Mozart of Brahms, it wasn’t your body that was transported. The sensation often described is a body yearning to follow where its spirit has gone . . . The classical dance that grew from this music had a stiff, straight back and moved in almost geometrical lines. The folk dances of the West were also physically contained, with linear gestures. The feet might move with wonderful flurries and intricate precision, but the hips and spine were kept rigid. (Ventura, 1987b, p. 86)
The liveliest dances of Beethoven’s last quartets no longer incite the feet to dance. Instead, the “heart inside dances.” Beethoven found a new way of uncoupling the motoric output from the expression of essentic form by allowing inner forms to dance without corresponding motor outputs. . . . In his music the meaning of essentic form appears no longer as a communication directed at motoric outward expression. (Clynes, 1977, p. 85)
Ventura, writing an account of the migration of musical techniques from West African ritual to contemporary rock and roll, makes a more sweeping statement than Clynes, but they move in a similar direction. Classical music is somehow decoupled from the body, while African-American music is not.
Particle swarm optimization
The latest issue of Swarm Intelligence is now available featuring this paper “A speculative approach to parallelization in particle swarm optimization.” The original formulation of PSO is due to Kennedy, J., Eberhart, R. C., with Shi, Y. (2001). Swarm Intelligence. Morgan Kaufmann.
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