Pat Churchland interviewed by Anthony Grayling for the BBC World Service. Churchland will be speaking in the Fall of 2010 at the NEI.
Alvin Goldman Symposium
Look out for what might be best considered the results from a symposium on Alvin Goldman in his distinctive guise as epistemologist – distinctive in the sense that he’s been at the heart of “analytical” epistemology for the past 40+ years and has recently lead the charge to make social epistemology acceptable to analytical epistemologists. If that’s not achievement enough then add into the mix his interest in philosophy of mind/cognitive science. Last, but by no means least, he’s the esteemed editor of EPISTEME. So check out:
Michael Joseph Oakeshott
Hayek in Mind
Here is an interview with the editors of Advances in Austrian Economics.
Closer to Truth: Consciousness
I’m pleased to have discovered a superb website that accompanies the PBS series Closer to Truth.
The definitive series on the latest advances in brain, mind, free will, personal identity, alien intelligence, parapsychology, afterlife, and brain-mind critical thinking.
Interviewer Robert Lawrence Kuhn does a super job of guiding the discussion for a lay audience and pretty much picks up where Brian Magee left off some 20 years ago in a series of programes for the BBC (and, I think, Channel 4). The interest here is on the selection of programs devoted to consciousness:
Why is Consciousness so Mysterious?
Why is Consciousness Baffling?
Is Consciousness an Illusion?
What’s the Essence of Consciousness?
What’s the Meaning of Consciousness?
Is Consciousness Fundamental?
Is Consciousness Irreducible?
Is Consciousness an Ultimate Fact?
What is the Mind-Body Problem?
Why a Mind-Body Problem?
Solutions to the Mind-Body Problem?
What are Brains?
How are Brains Structured?
What do Brains Do?
How do Brains Function?
How do Human Brains Work?
How Do Human Brains Think and Feel?
Can Brain Explain Mind?
How are Brains Conscious?
What Makes Brains Conscious?
How Brain Scientists Think about Consciousness
Among the luminaries interviewed include David Chalmers, Daniel Dennett, Hubert Dreyfus, Kristof Koch, Colin McGinn, Alva Noë, Roger Penrose, and John Searle and others besides. Here is the link to the video archive.
The Extended Mind Revisited
Here’s a rare treat to hear David Chalmers on the extended mind – typically, it’s been his co-author Andy Clark who has been exploring this idea in great detail. Here is their original paper; stay tuned for Rob Rupert’s review of Andy’s Supersizing the Mind to appear in the Journal of Mind and Behavior (as Chalmers says in his talk, he wrote the Forward to “Supersizing”).
Rethinking A.I.
Essentially, we want to rewind to 30 years ago and revisit some ideas that had gotten frozen,” he says, adding that the new group hopes to correct “fundamental mistakes” made in AI research over the years.
Swarm
Swarm grandee Guy Theraulaz presents a lecture on Biological Principles of Swarm Intelligence.
Other salient talks available on this site include:
Evolutionary Algorithms by Adam Prügel-Bennett
Dance evolution by Jeff Balogh, Gregg Dubbin, Michael Do
Science, Technology, and Applications of Swarm Robotics by Dario Floreano
The Mathematics of Emergence and Flocking by Stephen Smale
Fuzzy Logic by Michael Berthold
Differential Evolution and Particle Swarm Optimization in Partitional Clustering by Thiemo Krink
Structure and Dynamics in Complex Networks by Mark Newman
Information Transfer in Moving Animal Groups by David J. T. Sumpter
Small is beautiful
Over at Vitorino Ramos’ ever thoughtful blog is a post extolling the virtues of the “small”. The point is twofold:
First, the superb detail afforded by the photographs that Vitorino has assembled shows a rather complexly “designed” creature – a design that belies the supposedly simple life-form that ants are typically taken to be. The engineering challenges required to even roughly approximate such creatures is formidable.
Second, the study of ant sociality is of central interest to researchers in A.I. – the concept of stigmergy offers those of us with an interest in complex systems (human sociality being the paradigm) – a very fertile vein of inquiry.
So, next time you are about to snuff out this creature, at the very least, stop and spare a thought for this creature – we have much to learn from the small and the “simple.” To adapt Shakespeare:
As ants (flies) to wanton boys are we to th’ gods,
They kill us for their sport.
Robotic pet
Meet Paro. He’s a robotic seal developed by Japanese researchers to help dementia patients feel that they have companionship and a feeling of security, without the responsibilities of a living pet. (Thanks to Suzie Katz for alerting me to this story).
Made to emulate a live pet as much as possible, he can cuddle, nod and blink his big black eyes. Paro is currently being tested with patients in Baden-Baden and there are already 1,000 robot seals deployed in long-term care homes in Japan.
manwithoutqualities 