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Surfing Uncertainty Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind

Any new book by Andy Clark is, so far as I’m concerned, a notable event. Clark speaks to a general audience without ever being condescending or very jargony and he has a superb turn of phrase. Here is a curtain raiser, a talk on the topic. actionAndy ClarkArtificial intelligenceCognitionCognitive neuroscienceCognitive sciencecomplexityconsciousnessdistributed cognitiondistributed knowledgeEmbodied cognitionExtended MindExternalismphilosophical…

The “odd couple” of science: do we have a quantum Soul?

Check out the “odd couple’s” (I suspect a professional euphemism for looniness) freely available update Consciousness in the universe: a review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory with accompanying interview (first video). I heard Penrose speak at Imperial College around the time The Emperor’s New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics was released. I’ve never had the…

Dreams and Dreaming

Here is a just published lengthy entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. beliefCognitive neuroscienceCognitive scienceconsciousnessdelusionsDescartesDreamingdreamshallucinationillusionsPhilosophy of mindskepticismthe self

Hayek: Cognitive Scientist Avant La Lettre

From Advances in Austrian Economics PROLOGUE It is probably no more justified to claim that thinking man has created his culture than that culture created his reason (Hayek, 1952/1979, p. 155). For Hayek, intelligence is manifest through a reciprocal coalition with the artifactual (social and physical), a causal integration that can take ontogenetic, phylogenetic, individual,…

The consciousness myth

Nice paper from Galen Strawson. Hayek’s The Sensory Order (1952) is missing though (salient extract below). See also Hayek in Mind: Hayek’s Philosophical Psychology. Hayek’s discussion of the mind–body problem speaks directly to a topic that has dominated philosophy of mind for the past 35 years – qualia (quale for singular), a term of art that…

Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness

Old review. Dennett wrote me that he thought it the best written review he’d gotten in yonks. It’s been reprinted along the my other Dennett review in Daniel Dennett, Edited by John Symons, Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers. brain scienceCognitionCognitive neuroscienceCognitive scienceconsciousnessDaniel Dennettjohn symonsneurosciencephilosophical psychologyPhilosophy of mind