Here’s a piece from The Spectator written by, I suspect, John Casey. It looks like it’s dated 25 May 1985. Paul Franco gave it to me a few years ago and I’d folded it into a book and forgot about it. Click image a few times to enlarge.
Dawn of the robots
Ron Chrisley has just been sent me a link to an article that features excerpts of an interview with him in the Australian science magazine Cosmos. The article “Dawn of the Robots” offers a nice overview of the conceptual problems faced by robotics and the state of the art – all wrapped up in the usual techno-ebullience.
Ruth Garrett Millikan Lecture
I want to give a plug to the Annual William D. Hamilton Memorial Lecture that this year features Ruth Garrett Millikan on “The Tangle of Biological Purposes That Is Us.” For those of you in the Boston area this is an event that you really should try to attend.
April 1, 2009 at 7:00 p.m.
St. Francis Room
Jack Ketchum Library
Biddeford Campus
University of New England
Lehrer on Noë/Poole on Lehrer
Lehrer on Noë/Poole on Lehrer – nothing really of much interest from the effete world of “science” journalism.
New Issue of Journal of Mind and Behavior
Robot Humour
Walmart, the Coast Guard and Distributed Cognition
Here is a lovely practical (and little known) illustration of the power and nimbleness distributed knowledge and cognition. Here’s Steve Horwitz telling the story.
Please, would those harboring a fashionable indignation about Walmart desist from writing to me. The point is not about the substance of their business, but the logistics of their business and management culture.
EPISTEME cited in Chronicle of Higher Education
Larry Sanger’s EPISTEME article is cited in Chronicle of Higher Education.
Oakeshott symposium
The Oakeshott symposium on science, religion, and politics in the journal Zygon is now online.
In this issue there is also a symposium on Owen Flanagan’s latest book The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. I was scheduled to participate in this symposium, a symposium that I’d originally suggested, but my computer went though its 19th and final “nervous breakdown.”
Evolutionary roots of deception and self-deception
I want to bring your attention to the work of philosopher David Livingstone Smith. David is one of the foremost theorists in:
1. Biologically informed philosophical naturalism
2. Evolution and human nature
3. Deception and self-deception
4. The evolutionary psychology of war and peace
5. Dehumanization
His recent books include Less Than Human (forthcoming); The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War; and Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind. David was also guest editor of the most recent double issue of the Journal of Mind and Behavior. Here is a recent interview with David: he is a terrific expositor and, as he says, unlike many philosophers he is not ploughing a narrow field of interest only to philosophers. I see from David’s blog that he is featured in a CBC documentary as well – see here.
manwithoutqualities 