It is wonderful at last to see the Adam Smith of The theory of moral sentiments rather than The wealth of nations finally getting some attention. Smith’s moral psychology is amazingly presient. Here is one of the better articles by the very talented Nicolas Baumard making the connection.
Wiki-to-speech: stigmergy
Here is a video intended to stigmergically (a) promote wiki-to-speech and (b) using the concept of stigmergy to illustrate the script’s capabilities.
Gintis on Hayek
Check out this recent paper by Herb Gintis entitled Hayek’s “Contribution to a Reconstruction of Economic Theory.” Herb’s paper is, I think, going to be part of an edited collection that I’m also contributing to and am still polishing up. I had the pleasure of meeting Herb just over a year ago at the Society for Behavioral Economics conference in San Diego. I recently read Herb’s The Bounds of Rationality – the title a clear nudge and a wink to that other Herb – H. A. Simon’s famous phrase. And it’s endorsed by none other Nobel laureate Vernon Smith who I happened to meet this past May at a conference.
Group agency
Here’s a recent co-authored book from Christian List. CL is probably the leading theorist in this area and one of the best philosophers around who, not so long ago, was not affiliated with a philosophy department (I see that he now has a joint appointment with the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method). How the F*** does he manage to be so productive and maintain such quality? Professionally he is on the steepest projectory of our generation. Astonishing! RESPECT. And he is still an EPISTEME associate editor!
Taking the world as it is
Here is a short article from last December on Oakeshott in The Spectator by Andrew Sullivan that I’ve just come across. I think Andrew captures much of the temperamental appeal Oakeshott has for me – I was an Oakeshottian before I knew who the man was! Anyway, stay tuned for Paul Franco and my co-edited volume A Companion to Michael Oakeshott. Andrew here repeats the lovely Oakeshott response Andrew once told me:
I remember telling him I thought I would become a journalist after my PhD. His face fell. ‘I’ve always thought the need to know the news every day is a nervous disorder,’ he said, with a slight grin.
Trailing Hayek in Mind
Here is the table of contents for my forthcoming (in press) edited volume focusing on The Sensory Order – this is the first salvo of shameless promotion.
CONTENTS
“SOCIALIZING” THE MIND AND “COGNITIVIZING” SOCIALITY
Leslie Marsh
“MARGINAL MEN”: WEIMER ON HAYEK
Walter Weimer
PART I: NEUROSCIENCE
HAYEK IN TODAY’S COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Joaquín Fuster
THE NON-CARTESIAN VIEW AND THE BRAIN
Erol Başar
PART II: PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
HAYEK’S QUESTION: HOW CAN PARTS OF THE WORLD COME TO MODEL THE REST OF THE WORLD
Joshua Rust
HAYEK’S SPECULATIVE PSYCHOLOGY, THE NEUROSCIENCE OF VALUE ESTIMATION AND THE BASIS OF NORMATIVE INDIVIDUALISM
Don Ross
HAYEK, POPPER AND THE CAUSAL THEORY OF THE MIND
Edward Feser
PEIRCE AND HAYEK ON THE ABSTRACT NATURE OF COGNITION AND SENSATION
James Wible
HAYEK’S POST-POSITIVIST EMPIRICISM: EXPERIENCE BEYOND SENSATION
Jan Willem Lindemans
A NOTE ON THE INFLUENCE OF MACH’S PSYCHOLOGY IN HAYEK’S PSYCHOLOGY
Giandomenica Becchio
PART III: MIND AND SOCIALITY
THE EMERGENCE OF THE MIND: HAYEK’S ACCOUNT OF MENTAL PHENOMENA AS A PRODUCT OF SPONTANEOUS PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL ORDERS
Gloria Zúñiga y Postigo
HAYEK’S SELF-ORGANIZING MENTAL ORDER AND FOLK-PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES OF THE MIND
Chiara Chelini
BEYOND COMPLEXITY: CAN THE SENSORY ORDER DEFEND THE LIBERAL SELF?
Chor-yung Cheung
COGNITIVE OPENING AND CLOSING: TOWARDS AN EXPLORATION OF THE MENTAL WORLD OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Thierry Aimar
GETTING TO THE HAYEKIAN NETWORK
Troy Camplin
Less than human
My chum David is still getting lot’s of coverage for Less Than Human – see this review at Metapsychology.
Philosophy, Neuroscience and Consciousness
Here’s a Notre Dame Philosophical Review of Rex Welshon’s Philosophy, Neuroscience and Consciousness.
Robert Shapiro, DC Insider and Oakeshottian
Here’s a FT interview with Robert Shapiro, a D.C. insider, who has never forgotten the influence Oakeshott had on him. Robert has always been a very gracious correspondent – hopefully he’ll be kind enough to show me his art collection if I make it back to DC some time.
In addition to chairing Sonecon, Dr. Shapiro is also a Senior Fellow of the Georgetown University School of Business, advisor to the International Monetary Fund, director of the Globalization Center at NDN, chairman of the U.S. Climate Task Force, co-chair of America Task Force Argentina, and a director member of the Ax:son-Johnson Foundation in Sweden. From 1997 to 2001, Dr. Shapiro was U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs. In that position, he directed economic policy for the Commerce Department and oversaw the Nation’s major statistical agencies, including the Census Bureau while it planned and carried out the 2000 decennial census. Prior to that appointment, he was co-founder and Vice President of the Progressive Policy Institute and the Progressive Foundation. He also served as principal economic advisor to Bill Clinton in his 1991-1992 presidential campaign and senior economic advisor to Al Gore and John Kerry in their presidential campaigns. In 2008, he advised the campaign and transition of Barack Obama. Dr. Shapiro also was as Legislative Director for Senator Daniel P. Moynihan and Associate Editor of U.S. News & World Report. He has been a Fellow of Harvard University, the Brookings Institution, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Dr. Shapiro holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Harvard, a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and an A.B. from the University of Chicago. He is widely published, and his most recent book is Futurecast: How Superpowers, Populations and Demographics Will Change the You Live and Work (St. Martins’ Press, 2008).
The Embodied Mind: 20 years on
Commemorating a landmark book
The Future of the Embodied Mind
The summer school focuses on cognition in artificial and biological systems from a theoretical perspective that considers embodiment, situatedness, and action-relatedness as key elements in understanding and implementing cognitive systems.
The school will be held in San Sebastián, Spain 5th – 9th September 2011
The school will expose young researchers to theoretical ideas and modeling techniques, thereby facilitating a wider understanding of the broader enactive approach to cognition. It will take place against the background of the celebration of 20 years of the publication of the book “The Embodied Mind” by Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. This book is a symbolic landmark demarcating the beginnings of the consolidation of the embodied turn into a theoretically-loaded gathering of insights, discoveries and ideas within the sciences of the mind. The summer school will gather several of the different disciplines affected by this turn (robotics, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, AI) and some of the main protagonists in these fields. The objective will simultaneously be a taking stock of progress in embodied approaches over the last two decades and the elucidation of current challenges and directions. The school will have a duration of 5 days, each day featuring 2 or 3 talks in the morning by invited speakers, smaller discussion groups and workshops in the afternoon, and a general discussion session in the evening.
manwithoutqualities 