Dan Sperber’s tribute to Lévi-Strauss on the occasion of his 100th birthday.
An Economist’s Insight
Roger Koppl was been banging on about knowledge monopolies for the last year or so. I’ve heard comments to the effect: “What business is it of an economist meddling in the world of forensics?” Roger makes the point crystal clear in a recent posting of his. I quote the punchline:
The issue is not getting the right people in the job, but giving them the right incentives, which is another lesson economists can appreciate.
A Novel of Ideas
I came across this nice article by Ted Gioia entitled Exhuming Robert Musil: A Fresh Look at The Man Without Qualities. Here is an excerpt:
The Man Without Qualities depicts a strange world in which a couple is given a copy of Nietzsche as a wedding gift, a murderer on death row spends his days speculating on the nature of reality, and the most fashionable social gatherings are dominated by heated discussions on the essence of the soul. Neither you nor I have ever lived in such a world. In fact, I doubt that Robert Musil did, although his depiction of Vienna in the period leading up to World War I would lead you to believe that this was a society obsessed with grand thoughts and philosophical debates. But it is a provocative, exciting world, even if it is a fictional one, a world in which personal initiatives and social interactions reverberate with an intensity and intellectual potency rare in any age.
Bar Room Philosopher
Think Markets
I’d like to give a plug to a blog that’s just been started by some members of the Colloquium on Market Institutions and Economic Processes at the Department of Economics, New York University – ThinkMarkets. With names like Mario Rizzo, Bill Butos, Gene Callahan and Roger Koppl involved (this is no slight on the other contributors – I only know these folks’ work) this promises to be an interesting forum. I hope to attend the Colloquium in person someday – I’m told that it’s a highly stimulating and convivial group.
BigDog
I came across this pretty impressive video of Boston Dynamics’ BigDog robot. Click on image below to view.
Social Indentity
Colin McGinn poses a fair question: if Obama is half white why is he considered black? Colin is of course making the point that essentialism in these issues is not sustainable and this is reflected in the variety of very good responses to his question, perspectives that bring in fine-grained distinctions that would have never occured to me in addressing Colin’s question. There is clearly more to social identity than one might think. Perhaps the most vexing of social identities are the black African Jews – the leading light in this fascinating field is Tudor Parfitt.
Extended Mind: An Introduction
If you’ve ever heard the term “extended mind” and thought it denoted some sort of hocus pocus, then this recording will set you straight. Zoe Drayson of Bristol University has recorded a superb overview of the notion and the ethical implications arising from it. Zoe’s motivation for coming to this multidisciplinary literature had resonance for me – Cartesian philosophy of mind seemed to be so tired and infertile.
Zoe’s piece starts at 2:25 minutes into the recording – so please don’t think you’ve got the wrong clip. This recording will remain available for only 6 more days. Click here.
Distributed knowledge and cognition
Once again a superb posting by Vitorino Ramos on his blog. Heretofore I’d not been aware of the existence of hobo signs or the gum election, both of which nicely illustrate the various conceptual lenses associated with distributed cognition/knowledge. I’ll definitely be invoking these ideas. Good stuff!
I also notice another posting about Brian Arthur’s El Farol Bar Problem featuring both this famous paper and the actual bar – not surprisingly a place of light-hearted pilgrimage for those of us interested in complexity. Arthur’s problem is a must read.
Orders and Borders
This past weekend I had the good fortune to be able to attend the Second Conference on Emergent Order and Society held in Portsmouth, NH. The term “conference” doesn’t really characterise the format – it is more akin to a colloquium where the emphasis is on genuine discussion and conversation in an intimate group (18 in all) comprised of thinkers from around the world, from different disciplines with very different perspectives – all loosely bound by an interest in and appreciation of spontaneous orders. This must rate as the most memorable intellectual encounter I’ve ever experienced. And beyond the sessions, the conviviality was superb.
The papers will appear in a newly founded online journal over the course of the next few months. The call for papers ran as follows:
We seek original work in four basic areas:
1. Exploring the relations between emergent (spontaneous) orders and the instrumental organizations within them. For example, the relationship of corporations to the market, political parties to democracies, or schools of thought to science. To what degree are they benign, mutually beneficial, or conflicting?
2. Exploring issues involving the intersection and overlapping of different emergent order processes. For example, how do science and the market influence one another? How do science and democracy influence one another? To what extent can these influences be regarded as beneficial, neutral, or disruptive?
3. Exploring organizations that straddle the borders of different emergent orders. For example, the mass media must be both economically viable by serving consumers and also able to inform citizens in a democracy. A fishery must be economically viable and maintain its ecological sustainability. Different emergent processes are coordinated by different rules biased towards different values. How do they interact?
4. Exploring issues involving the borders of disciplines studying emergent phenomena. The distinction between emergent orders and instrumental organizations arose independently of disciplinary boundaries and a theoretical approach making use of it cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Thus much work in economics, anthropology, ecology, philosophy and sociology of science, and political science independently discovers and explores similar territory without benefiting from similar work elsewhere. How might we develop a paradigm of study that integrates these boundaries?
manwithoutqualities 