Swarm fantasy

particle swarm optimization, stigmergic, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior

swarm-1

Swarm is a composite being of hundreds of thousands of bees driven by a human intelligence. Swarm is technically intangible, as his body is merely an aggregate of tiny forms, and he can fly through the air or assume any shape and size he desires. Swarm can also mentally influence the actions of other bees, the full range of which may extend over hundreds of yards in radius. At first, Swarm seemed capable of only controlling other bees, but he has exhibited the ability to communicate/control other insects as well. The full story here.

Mirror Neurons

cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, Marco Lacoboni, mirror neurons, social cognition

Marco Lacoboni lectures on the phenomenon of Mirror Neurons, possibly the hottest topic in cognitive science these days. Unfortunately some of the illustrations from his talk have been cut. (Check out Larry Shapiro’s paper on the topic here)

Pat Churchland Podcast Interview

brain science, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, ginger campbell, patricia churchland, personal identity, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy on the radio, psychology

zfryk

Courtesy of Ginger Campbell’s excellent Brain Science Podcast website here is an interview with Pat Churchland (the interview begins after some preliminaries, so please be patient). An excellent idea is the inclusion of the interview transcript. I look forward to listening to the many other interviews. A great resource!

They’re here!

consciousness, robotics, robots

Let's face it

Here is a nice collection of HD photographs of a plethora of robots from Boston.com. The diversity of uses is astonishing – from the banal to the exotic – they are ubiquitous. But let’s not get carried away and talk of consciousness.

Top of the Pops (well relatively speaking)

artificial intelligence, Bounds of Cognition, cognition, cognitive modeling, cognitive science, cognitive systems, cognitive systems research, collaboration, collective intentionality, complexity, computational intelligence, consciousness, david chalmers, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, emergence, epistemology, extended mind, situated cognition, social cognition, social epistemology, stigmergic, stigmergy, swarm intelligence

Sad as it is, we were chuffed to discover that our co-authored paper is the 57th most popular paper in Chalmers’ MindPapers database out of a total of 18,477 papers.

Liberal Education Revisited

john pugh, liberal education, liverpool, philosophy, stanley fish

A couple of months ago I posted a link to Stanley Fish’s NYT article bemoaning the corroding of liberal education. With the news of the closure of Liverpool’s philosophy department here is John Pugh echoing Fish. 

Young Wittgenstein

philosophers, wittgenstein

holt-600

This photograph is featured in a recent NYT book review. Photos of Wittgenstein are few and far between so it was nice to see this one of the young Ludwig around 17 or 18 with the family. I also chanced upon the full version of Derek Jarman’s film which I couldn’t find on DVD. I recall that it was pretty accessible given the director’s “experimental” inclinations. A small screen, but given that it’s stagy, it doesn’t really detract from one’s enjoyment. 

 

Philosopher of Conversation

conversation, michael oakeshott, oakeshott, philosophy

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.
mo_spec2

Dawn of the robots

artificial intelligence, consciousness, cosmos, philosophy of mind, robotics, robots

20081216_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

evolution, evolutionary biology, new england institute, Ruth Garrett Millikan

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