Can it really be twenty years since Dennett’s Consciousness Explained? There were of course many reviews of said book but check out Galen Strawson’s review.
Chalmers’ TED talk on The Extended Mind
The Extended Mind – I think that this is the first time Dave has expanded the idea to social extension or networks. I recall that FB post he mentions.
And Dave is trailing on his website his forthcoming book Constructing the World (OUP). BIG NEWS!!
Soul Dust, the Magic of Consciousness
The first of Nicholas Humphrey’s Pufendorf Lectures plugging his new book. Here is a recent review from the NYT.
David Stove
I know that I may well cop a lot of flack disclosing that I’m a fan of David Stove. One colleague called Stove the worst curmudgeon he’d ever come across, a writer that had the ability to rub many constituencies up the wrong way. Be that as it may, I find Stove a great writer and a worthwhile voice against the prevailing milieu in which he wrote – I like a “damn the torpedoes” attitude from time to time, Dennett being the best current practitioner. The reason I mention Stove is that I had the good fortune to meet Jim Franklin, Stove’s literary executor. I learned from Jim that a new and the last posthumous collection of Stove’s has just been published, edited by Andrew Irvine at UBC. Here is the Stove page maintained by Jim Franklin and an article by Roger Kimball (who has also written the forward to this latest work). For what it’s worth here is Stove’s Wikipedia entry. A good link is to Scott Campbell’s bio-sketch of Stove. For the more technically minded here is a reference to Stove’s The Problem of Induction.
Update: I now have a copy of the book courtesy of the editor Andrew Irvine. The title essay (the only essay) comprises some 100 pages. Another 100 or so pages is devoted to Stove’s bibliography. I see that Roger Scruton is featured on the dust-jacket blurb and that Andrew (rightly) takes on Hayek in his introduction. Kimball presents a very good portrait of Stove.
Res Cogitans Extensa: update
A few weeks ago I trailed the release of Georg Theiner’s Res Cogitans Extensa: A Philosophical Defense of the Extended Mind Thesis. Then there was no page devoted to Georg’s book by the publisher. Well now there is so check out the book’s page here. I have the book in hand – scanning it promises a good read. My only gripe is that there is no index. Hopefully, some close-grained reviews will appear over the course of the next year.
Hayek, Weimer, Gibson and Rosch
Here is the flyer from the legendary conference convened by Walt Weimer – the other notables included Gibson, who I’m told snubbed Hayek despite so warmly receiving The Sensory Order and Eleanor Rosch later to find fame as co-author of The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. It is amazing that Weimer had (still has I might add!!) such balls and foresight to see Hayek’s genius – after all – Hayek was a rank outsider. Doff of hat and raised glass to Walt Weimer! Weimer was, by the way, interviewed by Bernard Baars some years ago but there was no mention of Hayek. Many thanks to Jim Wible, a student of Walt Weimer, who so kindly dug out this flyer out. Also thanks to Walt’s other students (Bill Butos, Harry Heft, Denny Proffitt and John Johnson) who came forward with such vivid memories of this amazing character – here are some photos from that conference. Last, but by no means least, it was my late chum Rob Haskell who, when I innocently asked if he knew Weimer, got very animated (this was in mid-winter at a nondescript bar in the Maine Mall). He had much he wanted to chat about at some later date – it wasn’t to be.
Stigmergic Bridge
Coherence with concept and algorithm
A network bridge which connects multiple points on ground and a subway station. The circulation, structure and enclosure are based on stigmergy algorithm operated on three different scales.
Arguments based on stigmergy
Articulation of materialization is achieved by orienting components to structure and enclosure “pheromone”. The components gradually change size and color from structure to enclosure, forming a solid entity.
A few months ago I came across the work of architectural student Yang Chenghan. It’s amazing that I have not come across any other architects deploying stigmergic algorithms – one would think that the concept would be part and part of an architect’s conceptual toolbox. Good for Yang – I’d imagine this guy has a bright career ahead of him. Here are some new images of what he terms a stigmergic bridge.
Goldman and Lackey on Social Epistemology on Philosophy TV
Here are two of the biggest names in analytical SE discussing the area on Philosophy TV. Another opportunity to plug the journal with which they are associated – EPISTEME.
Consciousness and the Universe
Check out the (mostly) published special issue of the Journal of Cosmology edited by Penrose and Hameroff which includes the paper “The Spread Mind: Seven Steps to Situated Consciousness” by Riccardo Manzotti.
