Robert Nozick

episteme, epistemology, ethics, Nozick, personal identity, political philosophy, rationality, robert nozick, social constructivism, social epistemology

Today marks the death of Robert Nozick one of the most versatile philosophers of the last quarter of the 20th Century. The more I read Nozick, the more astonishing his talent seems to be. He writes with such subtle twists about so many issues from politics to epistemology to identity to consciousness, to ethics to philosophical method – with great humility and aplomb. Philosophical Explanations is amazing for its clarity and its “meaning of life” purview for somebody within the analytical tradition. Though I admire the quality of Nozick’s mind I don’t think he led in any interesting directions. Anarchy, State and Utopia is full of clever arguments but there are counter-arguments as well (yet another mind, along with Hayek, misappropriated by the ideological libertarians). The book rests on assumptions about rights which are never made good anywhere in Nozick’s work. PE treats of ethics but doesn’t say anything about how the rights-talk of ASU can be supported. The epistemological parts of PE are a blind alley: his tracking theory doesn’t work for knowledge – or for value. He was a brilliant firework, spectacular in full blaze, then leaving us as much in the dark as ever. This said, he remains one of my favourite philosophers up there with Ryle.

A view that chimes with mine is by Alan Ryan and can be found in The Independent. A rather dull obituary can be found in The Telegraph. Here is a piece from the Harvard Gazette written by none other than Putnam, Scanlon, Scarry and Cavell. For a thoroughly uninformed (not to mention the typos) obituary see The Guardian. I briefly made contact with Nozick on the publication of his last book primarily because of the chapter on Truth and Relativism which was well within the EPISTEME remit. I wanted  to ask if he’d care to become an honorary founding editor  of EPISTEME: I had no idea just how ill he was. It was not to be.

I’m surprised that I couldn’t find any recordings (video or audio) of Nozick. Here is a recording that I assume is of Nozick.

Swarm Intelligence: special issue

collective intentionality, complex adaptive systems, complexity, computational intelligence, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, hayek, network theory, networks, neuron, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior, swarm intelligence

The new issue of Swarm Intelligence is now available. The excerpt below from the editors’ introduction – they may not realise it, but it this is as Hayekian as one can get:

Swarm Cognition is a novel multidisciplinary approach that encompasses research in neurosciences, cognitive psychology, social ethology and swarm intelligence, with the aim of studying cognition as an emergent collective phenomenon in which perception, attention, decision making and other cognitive processes are brought forth by a multitude of elementary units tightly interacting among each other. Within the Swarm Cognition framework a broad view of cognition is adopted, so that its definition also includes the behaviour displayed in a distributed system like an ant colony. Indeed, an ant colony can display complex cognitive functions as a result of the interactions among the system components. The parallel with brain activities is straightforward. An ant is part of a colony, much as a neuron is part of a brain. An ant cannot do much in isolation, but a colony is a highly resilient adaptive system. Similarly, a neuron is individually able to only make limited interactions with other neurons, but the brain is capable of highly complex cognitive processes. In other words, both ants and neurons behave/act in perfect harmony with other conspecifics/cells to accomplish tasks that go beyond the capability of a single individual. Out of metaphor, Swarm Cognition aims at studying cognitive processes as the emergent result of the collective dynamics in a distributed system, be the system composed of autonomous agents like ants or basic control units like neurons.

Therefore, Swarm Cognition can be considered part of swarm intelligence, above all for those studies that recognise cognitive processes in the behaviour of distributed systems. In this respect, swarm intelligence can offer a wide range of tools and techniques to understand, study and implement complex behaviour in distributed systems. Swarm Cognition can broaden the perspective of swarm intelligence by applying such techniques to the study of cognitive behaviour, and by exploring the relationship of the behaviour of complex distributed systems with studies in neuro- and cognitive sciences, which are not commonly targeted in the context of swarm intelligence.

Oakeshott Conference: Tulsa 2011

liberal education, liberalism, oakeshott, philosophy of education, political philosophy, politics, religion

Religion, Politics and the Future of Liberal Education:
The Tenth Anniversary Meeting of the
Michael Oakeshott Association, 2001-2011

UNIVERSITY OF TULSA
OCTOBER 13-16, 2011

2011 marks the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Michael Oakeshott Association, a group established to encourage the critical study of one of the twentieth century’s most important political philosophers. Previous conferences have taken place at the London School of Economics, Colorado College, the University of Jena in Germany, and Baylor University.

The University of Tulsa will host the Association’s meetings this year. The focus of the conference will be Oakeshott’s understanding of liberal education and the contemporary university. Also central will be the possible relationships between university education, politics and religion. Potential authors should strive both to engage Oakeshott’s work on its own terms and to locate it in broader discussions about education, religion and politics. Papers that compare Oakeshott to other relevant thinkers are encouraged.

Abstracts, no more than 500 words, should be sent by April 15, 2011 to Elizabeth_Corey@baylor.edu. Abstracts should also include: title of paper, full name(s), affiliation, current position, and an email address.

Tallis Reviews Ramachandran’s Latest

brain, brain science, churchland, cognition, cognitive closure, cognitive science, consciousness, Daniel Dennett, mirror neurons, neuromania, neuron, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, phantom limbs, philosophy of mind, Ramachandran, raymond tallis, synesthesia

Via Pete Mandik at Brain Hammer here is a rather snippy review by Raymond Tallis in the WSJ on V. S. Ramachandran’s latest which just yesterday I was leafing through. Is this the opening salvo of a slanging match akin to the APA Eastern Division meeting a few years back with Dennett vs. Bennett and Hacker?

The trouble begins when the neurologist turns philosopher and tries to use these insights to get closer to “what makes us human.” He suggests that such cross-wiring underpins both humans’ ability to enjoy metaphors and artists’ capacity to create novel connections—an assertion that has scarcely any research to back it up. (What little has been done depends on laughably simplistic models of how metaphors and creativity really work.) Likewise, his explanation of how we became speaking animals has scarcely a toe-hold on empirical data.

Social Epistemology in Good Health

adrian haddock, alvin goldman, duncan prichard, episteme, epistemology, Ernest Sosa, Frederick F. Schmitt, jennifer lackey, Jonathan Kvanvig, Lorraine Code, Michael Lynch, miranda fricker, paul faulkner, ram neta, sandy goldberg, social epistemology

Here is a new title from OUP comprising new essays on social epistemology. Some of the best names in the business are here. This is a nice compliment to the New Studies and  Essential Readings volumes that came out earlier in 2010.

Less Than Human

anthropology, cognitive science, david livingstone smith, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, homophobia, less than human, military propaganda, racism, xenophobia

I want to give a plug to the soon to be released book by my chum David Livingstone Smith. DLS has that wonderful ability to make serious reading very accessible while never dumbing down the subject matter. Here is a just released UNE article on DLS. See here for the book’s Amazon page listing endorsements from some of the biggest names in the field.

 

Related Articles

Philippa Foot

Aquinas, Elizabeth Anscombe, iris murdoch, is/ought, moral philosophy, Philippa Foot, steve pyke

Article in the NYT via David Livingstone Smith. Nice photo by Steve Pyke as one would expect.

Foot’s legacy: I think she did make a relevant claim, when it needed to be discussed (i.e. when Hare’s prescriptivism, for good or ill, seemed to impose no restriction of content on moral judgement), that morality is internally related to considerations of benefit and harm and that not just anything can count as such. Her weakness was, I think, that she delivered aperçus but didn’t elaborate them – we just got articles and (then only latterly) very slender books. The books were passés, really. Ethics had moved on from the debates of the 50s from which she never genuinely emerged.

Some Mind Titles for 2011

Carlo Umilta, cognitive science, consciousness, Dennett, embodied cognition, embodiment, emotion, enaction, enactivism, eric schwitzbebel, evolutionary psychology, ezequiel di paolo, Frances Anderson, inside jokes, john stewart, louise barrett, matthew hurley, michelle maiese, neuromania, olivier gapenne, Paolo Legrenzi, philosophy of mind, reginald adams, things and places, zenon pylyshyn

Some books to look out for in 2011:

Also Enaction: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science (shame about the cringe-making subtitle that has all the hyperbolic clichés “toward,” “new” and that old favourite “paradigm.”)

Neuromania: On the limits of brain science


Amygdala volume and social network size in humans

Amygdala, Bradford Dickerson, brain, brain scans, brain science, Christopher Wright, cognition, cognitive science, complex adaptive systems, Kevin Bickart, Lisa Feldman Barrett, network theory, networks, neurobiology, neuron, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, philosophy of social science, psychology, Rebecca Dautoff, situated cognition, social cognition, social networking, sociocognition

Not a deep surprise but still nice to see some empirical work coming through. Check out this brief report just published online in Nature Neuroscience. The upshot: participants with larger amygdalas typically had more people in their social lives and maintained more complex relationships.