Here is the intro to Joel’s article: Often, I tell a joke and the people around me laugh. (Sometimes this laughter even appears to be sincere.) I usually take this reaction to mean that they find my comment amusing. I like to smile at babies whenever possible and relish the bright-eyed facial animation and gestures…
Since I missed marking the birth of Simon on the 15th, here’s a belated posting of an obituary by his student Edward A. Feigenbaum. (I’m pleased to report that my co-edited project with Roger Frantz commemorating the centenary of HS’s birth is coming together very nicely. HS’s daughter has been incredibly responsive towards the project). Herbert…
Here is the intro to Rob’s article: There is no doubt that social interaction plays an important role in language-learning, as well as in concept acquisition. In surprising contrast, social interaction makes only passing appearance in our most promising naturalistic theories of content. This is particularly true in the case of mental content (e.g., Cummins,…
Here is the into to Raymond and Lynne’s paper: Any extended analysis of everyday talk reveals the presence of stretches of language that convey metaphorical meaning. Consider, as one example, the following remarkable conversation between Jo Berry, whose father, Sir Anthony Berry, was killed by a bomb in 1984, and Patrick Magee, who planted the…
An extract from Lynne Rudder Baker’s paper: Cognitive scientists have become increasingly enamored of the idea of extended minds. The extended-mind thesis (EM) is the claim that mentality need not be situated just in the brain or even within the boundaries of the skin. EM is the modal claim that it is possible that the…
This from the WSJ “The Road to Serfdom.” Hayek’s book, he explains, was originally translated into Chinese in 1962 as “an ‘internal reference’ for top leaders,” meaning it was forbidden fruit to everyone else. Only in 1997 was a redacted translation made publicly available, complete with an editor’s preface denouncing Hayek as “not in line…
The power team of Barnier, Sutton, Harris, and Wilson. Paradigms in which human cognition is conceptualised as “embedded”, “distributed”, or “extended” have arisen in different areas of the cognitive sciences in the past 20 years. These paradigms share the idea that human cognitive processing is sometimes, perhaps even typically, hybrid in character: it spans not only…
Here’s Mark’s intro from his paper from a special issue of Zygon on The Extended Mind and Religious Thought from a few years back. The view known as the extended mind, following Andy Clark and David Chalmers (1998), also goes under a number of aliases. Clark and Chalmers themselves also refer to their view as active…
Eliot’s intro and first section to his paper: Human cognition mostly takes place in the context of other people. This is true in two ways. First, if we consider the immediate context of other people who are physically present, they may influence or even help constitute an individual’s cognition by providing information, agreeing or disagreeing,…
This simulation from Jean Lievens. Cognitive sciencecomplexityEmergenceExtended MindExternalismSpontaneous orderstigmergicStigmergy
manwithoutqualities 