Art and the Nature of Consciousness

aesthetics, brain, brain scans, brain science, category error, cognition, cognitive science, connectionism, consciousness, Descartes, fMRI, ghost in the machine, homunculus, mind body, neurobiology, neuron, neurophilosophy, Neurophysics, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, psychology, qualia, Susan Aldworth

Check out the terrific work of artist Susan Aldworth. Her artistry emerges from both a philosophical and an empirical sensibility. See here for a brief profile and artist’s statement.

EPISTEME ’10 Update: Cognitive Ecology

alan millar, cognitive ecology, David Bloor, David Henderson, episteme, epistemology, Finn Spicer, hilary kornblith, Lorraine Code, Martin Kusch, Matthew Chrisman, mike ridge, miranda fricker, peter graham, ram neta, sandy goldberg, social epistemology, Stephen Grimm

Duncan Prichard, our local host in Edinburgh, has just updated the EPISTEME conference info – registration is now open! A pretty impressive line-up from all factions of social epistemology.

Qualia – The Movie

cognition, cognitive closure, cognitive science, cognitive systems, complexity, computational intelligence, concept of mind, consciousness, Derek LaPorte, ghost in the machine, philosophy of mind, qualia, rukmani bachal, the "hard" problem

I recently brought your attention to the topic of consciousness in literature. I now want to draw your attention to a very ambitious film project – Qualia, the movie. Click here to hear the film’s writer-director, Derek LaPorte and producer, Rukmani Bachal talk about the proposed project. Rukmani tells me:

Qualia deals with the question of the root of consciousness in a very approachable manner. It has been extensively researched by the writer-director, Derek LaPorte, who has taken its key elements and simplified them for the average movie-goer.

It will bring awareness to the audience about the fringes of this science. To those in the know, parts of it will resemble science-fiction, for e.g. the scale they use in the film is capable of weighing down to a yoctogram that currently does not exist. However, those sci-fi elements are possible as soon as a few years down the road and nothing is too far-fetched.

The method described to test dying patients represents a consensus to what would be considered perfect circumstances to conduct such an experiment.

Now there are many ways one can blow $10 on absolute crap – here is an opportunity to back some entrepreneurial folks who want to get beyond the banality of most feature films. If they do secure the requisite funding, the film might well be interesting on a purely entertainment level; it might also be intellectually interesting bringing the somewhat esoteric philosophical debate on qualia to a wider audience, however whimsical the story outline might be:

Greg Jenkins is a neuroscientist and part of a team ‘chasing dragons’ as they conduct an experiment to find the root of consciousness by testing patients at the moment of their deaths.

Hugh Williams, the mastermind, and Jennifer Jenkins, Greg’s wife, form the trio. Greg suffers from seizures which lead to eerie encounters with a ghost and that causes a crisis of faith.

A thrilling, horrifying, mystifying and ultimately joyous drama, Qualia will leave the viewer with a bittersweet sense of hope.

Swarm Theory

ants, cognitive closure, cognitive systems, collaboration, collective intentionality, complexity, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, national geographic, robotics, robots, spontaneous order, stigmergic, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior, swarm intelligence, wasps

Here is an article (admittedly a few years old) and some accompanying photographs from National Geographic.

The Social Science of Hayek’s The Sensory Order

advances in austrian econmics, austrian economics, Bill Butos, brain science, bruce caldwell, cognition, cognitive closure, cognitive ecology, cognitive science, cognitive systems, Colin McGinn, collective intentionality, complexity, computational intelligence, connectionism, consciousness, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, Economics, Edelman, Embedded, embodiment, enactivism, evolutionary psychology, extended cognitive systems, extended mind, externalism, Fuster, gerald edelman, Gilbert Ryle, hayek, Inevitability Thesis, knowing how knowing that, leslie marsh, liberalism, mind body, neurobiology, neuroeconomics, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, phenomenology, philosophy of economics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of social science, psychology, qualia, rationality, reason, situated cognition, social cognition, social connectionism, social constructivism, social epistemology, socialism, sociology, spontaneous order, stigmergy, the "hard" problem, The Road to Serfdom, the sensory order

Here are the publisher’s details for this soon-to-be released volume that includes my paper “Hayek: cognitive scientist avant la lettre“

How long until robots are running off with someone’s wife?

Alan Winfield, artificial intelligence, brain, brain science, cognitive closure, cognitive science, complexity, consciousness, emergence, robotics, robots, ron chrisley, situated cognition, Susan Greenfield, the "hard" problem, turing test

An article from Silicon.com pitched at a general audience. I love the last photo caption: How long until robots are running off with someone’s wife?

Collective Knowledge and Epistemic Trust

episteme, epistemology, social epistemology, testimony, trust

Here is a conference that promises to be one of the highlights of the social epistemology calender this year. Of course, don’t forget EPISTEME ’10 nor indeed the special issue on trust and testimony.

Consciousness in Literature

cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, dan lloyd, david lodge, literature, radiant cool, thinks . . .

From time to time I’m asked to recommend a novel that has consciousness as its central concern. Two that I’ve read are David Lodge’s Thinks . . . and Dan Lloyd’s Radiant Cool. The former is light entertaining fluff (the “new” university setting will be especially resonant for British readers; most readers will recognise the Dennett-like protagonist, only in the sense of a philosophical position and perhaps comportment – there are certainly no similarities in terms of private life); the latter, written by a formidable theorist actually working in consciousness studies, is pretty dense and is chock full of philosophy in-jokes. I’d recommend both.