Richard Gunderman

Aristotle, philanthropy, Richard Gunderman

This past weekend at a conference on the philosophy of philanthropy held in Indianapolis, I had the deep privilege and pleasure to meet up again with Richard Gunderman. I originally met Richard at a conference in Portsmouth, NH exactly three years ago and was mesmerised by his conference talk and his attentive kindness. Knowing that this would appeal to him, I subsequently sent him a copy of Oakeshott’s Rationalism in Politics with instructions to read “The voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind” first. He assured me he did. The second time I met Richard was at his invitation to come to Indianapolis for a conference on philanthropy some 18 months ago. Again, I was struck by his brilliance, humanity, passion and subtlety.

I can say that in my orbit of living persons with immense intellectual power and moral virtue in equal measure, Richard ranks within the top five – I would not want to order them – since I wouldn’t have met one without the other. Meeting him has been one of the most transformative encounters of life. He has a profoundly rich and deep religious/aesthetic sensibility without ever coming over as a closed “preachy” mind. His moral sensibility is so palpable one becomes aware that one is in the company of a great human being and one is humbled. I’m hardly the first person to make this observation. I’m also honoured to be a part of the journal issue that Richard will be participating in. As the wonderful Heather Wood Ion (who I met through Richard as well) referring to Richard’s We Make a Life by What We Give puts it:

Some books enlighten us, some books inspire us, and some books challenge us to expand our understanding of who we are and who we can become. [This book] does all three…. It simply surpasses all other books in the field, but more importantly, it expands our understanding of the field of philanthropy and of ourselves and our potential.

Here is a press release sketching Richard’s interests. How he juggles all this and with a family is astonishing.

Here’s a video of Richard in full flight:

Oakeshott on Rome and America

Gene Callahan, history of political ideas, oakeshott, political philosophy, rationalism in politics, rationality

My chum Gene Callahan has just alerted me to the forthcoming publication of his book.

The political system of the Roman Republic were based almost entirely on tradition, “the way of the ancestors,” rather than on a written constitution. While the founders of the American Republic looked to ancient Rome as a primary model for their enterprise, nevertheless, in line with the rationalist spirit of their age, the American founders attempted to create a rational set of rules that would guide the conduct of American politics, namely, the US Constitution.

These two examples offer a striking case of the ideal types, famously delineated by Michael Oakeshott in “Rationalism in Politics” and elsewhere, between politics as a practice grounded in tradition and politics as a system based on principles flowing from abstract reasoning.

This book explores how the histories of the two republics can help us to understand Oakeshott’s claims about rational versus traditional politics. Through examining such issues we may come to understand better not only Oakeshott’s critique of rationalism, but also modern constitutional theory, issues in the design of the European Union, and aspects of the revival of republicanism.

About the Author
Gene Callahan holds a PhD in political theory from Cardiff University, and is a Fellow at the university’s Collingwood and British Idealism Centre. He teaches economics at SUNY Purchase is the author of Economics for Real People (Ludwig von Mises Institute)

E.O. Wilson

ants, collaboration, collective intentionality, collective knowledge, complexity, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, Fukuyama, hobbes, human nature, locke, rousseau, social cognition, sociobiology, sociocognition, spontaneous order, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy

Here’s an article in this month’s Atlantic.

Rejecting the views of classic political philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau that primitive humankind started out as a collection of scattered, unorganized individuals, Fukuyama writes: “Human sociability is not a historical or cultural acquisition, but something hardwired into human nature.” Nowhere is Wilson, who pioneered this view, even mentioned.

Wilson is of course famous for his work on stigmergy:

•  Sematectonic stigmergy.

•  Sign-, cue-, or marker-based stigmergy.

Sematectonic stigmergy denotes communication via modification of a physical  environment, an elementary example being the carving out of trails. One needs only to cast an eye around any public space, a park or a college quadrangle for instance, to see the grass being worn away, revealing a dirt pathway that is a well-traveled, unplanned and thus indicates an ‘‘unofficial’’ intimation of a shortcut to some salient destination.

Marker-based stigmergy denotes communication via a signaling mechanism. A standard example is the phenomenon of pheromones laid by social insects. Pheromone imbued trails increase the likelihood of other ants following the aforementioned trails. Unlike sematectonic stigmergy  which is a response to an environmental modification , marker-based stigmergy does not  make any direct contribution to a given task.

Wilson, E. O. (1975/2000). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Extended mind and Buddhism

buddhism, cognitive science, David DeMoss, enactivism, extended cognitive systems, extended mind, externalism, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, self

Here’s a recently published paper by David DeMoss.

Ritchie and McCarthy

artificial intelligence, C, computation, computational intelligence, computer science, Dennis Ritchie, John McCarthy, LISP, programming, steve jobs, UNIX

With all the hipster hype accorded to Steve Jobs on his passing, there are two names that are being overlooked – Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy. Here is their obituary from The Economist.

New Book by Alva Noë

active externalism, active perception, Alva Noë, cognitive science, consciousness, extended mind, externalism, knowing how knowing that, philosophy of mind, situated cognition

Here’s a new book to be published early next year by Alva Noë entitled Varieties of Presence. If anyone cares to review it for The Journal of Mind and Behavior, an outlet that has featured some of the best essays in the situated cognition genre, drop me a line. (Offer now closed).

Peter Goldie

aesthetics, emotion, empathy, jane o'grady, peter goldie, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology

Here is the very excellent obituarist Jane O’Grady on the late Peter Goldie whom I met very briefly in a pub near UCL. I met Jane some eight years ago at a conference in, I think, Tunbridge Wells. She was a fascinating person to talk to and told me about the process of obituary writing, much of which I found amusing.

Don Lavoie

austrian economics, distributed knowledge, Don Lavoie, Pete Boettke, steve horwitz, stigmergy

Don Lavoie died on this day ten years ago. It just so happens I’m reading his National Economic Planning: What Is Left? and noticed his dates. Here is Steve Horwitz (along with Pete Boettke) marking the commemoration.

Hayek in Mind: Editorial Introduction

active externalism, adam smith, advances in austrian econmics, brain science, Chiara Chelini, Chor-Yung Cheung, cognition, cognitive closure, cognitive science, cognitive systems, collective intentionality, collective knowledge, complex adaptive systems, complexity, connectionism, consciousness, cybernetics, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, don ross, edward feser, Embedded, embodied cognition, embodiment, enaction, enactivism, erol basar, evolutionary psychology, extended cognitive systems, extended mind, externalism, friedrich hayek, Fuster, Giandomenica Becchio, Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo, hayek, James wible, Jan Willem Lindemans, joaquin fuster, joshua rust, neurophilosophy, phenomenology, philosophical psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, psychology, qualia, social epistemology, spontaneous orders, the "easy" problems, the "hard" problem, the sensory order, Thierry Aimar, Troy Camplin, walter weimer

Here is an uncorrected proof (do not cite) of my introduction to Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology. Further details will be made available just as soon as the publisher has updated the webpage for this book (according to Amazon the book will be made available on December 13th). A dedicated website to the volume can be found here.

Spatio-Temporal Dynamics on Co-Evolved Stigmergy

collaboration, collaborative filtering, collective intentionality, collective knowledge, complex adaptive systems, complexity, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, network theory, networks, self organizing systems, spontaneous order, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy, Vitorino Ramos

Here’s a co-authored paper by one of the leading complexity theorists Vitorino Ramos.