This article is really creating a buzz (sorry!!) The idea has some resonance to an aspect of Hayek’s social epistemology (see the article that I just today uploaded). In much the same way that synapses are strengthened while unused linkages weaken and wither away, so too are paths to salient social knowledge strengthened or weakened –…
Namit Arora in a themed issue of Philosophy Now considers the complexity of consciousness and its implications for artificial intelligence. But despite the big advances in computing, AI has fallen woefully short of its ambition and hype. Instead, we have ‘expert’ systems that process predetermined inputs in specific domains, perform pattern matching and database lookups, and…
Maturana and Varela’s classic Autopoiesis and Cognition is freely available here (H/T to Paul Loader). What makes a living system a living system? What kind of biological phenomenon is the phenomenon of cognition? These two questions have been frequently considered, but, in this volume, the authors consider them as concrete biological questions. Their analysis is bold and…
Born on this day in 1912. Andrew Hodges’ Turing page. See his Stanford entry as well. Alan TuringAndrew HodgesArtificial intelligenceTuringTuring machineTuring testWorld War II
manwithoutqualities 