They all seem to be tweeting This observation by Herzog is totemic of what seems to me like a mass self-induced autism, immersed in a vortex of banality, that society has sunk into. When I observe how oblivious people are of reality when out and about with their device, it’s easy to understand why many of us refuse(d) to…
Catching up on Sam Harris’ podcasts — this one is of particular interest. Sam’s guest, David Krakauer, I recall from taking the debut Santa Fe Institute freebie course a few years back run by the excellent Melanie Mitchell. Do check out the SFI’s free programmes, notably SFI’s Complexity Explorer: it beats many a fee-paying university course. In any event, if you…
The thirteenth in a series of excerpts from Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon. Marcin Miłkowski Herbert A. Simon is well known for his account of bounded rationality. Whereas classical economics idealized economic agency and framed rational choice in terms of the decision theory, Simon insisted that agents need…
Richard Heersmink’s new EM paper. Cognitiondistributed cognitionExtended MindExternalismmetaphyicsnarrative selfpersonal identityPhilosophy of mindsituated cognition
Here’s an extract from the sixth and the final article from this special Human-Human Stigmergy issue. It is the second part to Francis Heylighen’s contribution. ***** In a preceding paper (Heylighen, 2015), stigmergy was defined as a mechanism for the coordination of actions, in which the trace left by an action on some medium stimulates the performance…
Nicholas Christakis (yes, the very same that had been in the news recently, unfortunately caught in the midst of campus fuckwittery) explains how face-to-face social networks and their structures influence behaviors and phenomena in human society and the natural living world. (H/T to Guy Theraulaz). NPR/TED Video/Audio. collective behaviorcommunicationcontagiondistributed cognitionemergent orderExtended MindgeneticsNetwork ScienceNicholas ChristakisSocial networkSwarm behavior
The very excellent Mark Rowlands. I’m very much looking forward to the handbook. 4eCognitive scienceEmbodied cognitionenactivismExtended MindExternalismintentionalityMark RowlandsPhilosophy of mindShaun Gallaghersituated cognition
This special issue of Cognitive Systems Research is intended as a follow-up and a companion to an earlier issue devoted to the theme of stigmergy, what we termed stigmergy 3.0 ( Doyle & Marsh, 2013). It reinforces the idea that the observation and the theorizing of the mechanism of stigmergy is no longer the sole…
The second in a series of excerpts from Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon. Robert D. Rupert One can hardly underestimate Herbert Simon’s influence on contemporary cognitive science and empirically oriented philosophy of mind. Working with collaborators at Carnegie Mellon and the Rand Corporation, he wrote Logic Theorist and General Problem…
New paper from the very excellent Joel Krueger. See also Joel’s Empathy and the Extended Mind paper from a few years back along with other papers discussing this topic. One of the primary functions of religious texts — along with the different rituals and forms of worship constructed with them — is, precisely, to take over part of…
manwithoutqualities 