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Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive Systems

A freely available piece from Topics in Cognitive Science. With the keywords complexity; dynamical systems; extended cognition; consciousness – who could resist. In fact the whole issue is freely available from this relatively new title published under the auspices of the Cognitive Science Society. The complex systems approach to cognitive science invites a new understanding of…

Can science ever explain consciousness?

Anil Seth, Chris Frith and Barry Smith (of Birkbeck, not Buffalo!) outline the topography in a podcast. Anil SethBarry SmithChris FrithCognitionCognitive neuroscienceCognitive sciencecomplexityconsciousnessEmbodied cognitionMagnetic resonance imagingneurosciencePhilosophy of mindqualia

Remembering Varela

Four articles (and more) of interest to theorists interested in enaction: 1. Tom Froese’s new article in Adaptive Behavior: Critics of the paradigm of enaction have long argued that enactive principles will be unable to account for the traditional domain of orthodox cognitive science, namely “higher-level” cognition and specifically human cognition. Moreover, even many of the…

Views of Hayek, Hebb, and Heisenberg: Toward an Approach to Brain Functioning

Neuroscientist Erol Basar on Hayek F. A. Hayek’s The Sensory Order must rate as one of the most creative books written on general philosophy of neuroscience. Although Hayek was a Noble-prize winner in economics and was not educated as a neuroscientist, his book opens up a new window on neuroscience, and this window certainly offers…

Colin McGinn on Philosophy of Mind

McGinn, one of my favourite philosophers of mind, notwithstanding Dennett’s view of McGinn’s well-known position: In the Critics section of this week’s New Statesman, ten pages of which are devoted to a philosophy special, our Critic at Large is Colin McGinn, professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami, who surveys the current state of…