Classicism, Connectionistm, and The Harmonic Mind

I just got back from the Eastern APA, where I chaired an interesting author-meets-critics session on Paul Smolensky and Geraldine Legendre’s book, The Harmonic Mind (MIT Press 2006).  The critics were Bill Ramsey and (jointly) Terry Horgan and John Tienson. We all went to lunch after the session.  Smolensky expressed surprise at …

C.B. Martin, The Mind in Nature

C.B. Martin, The Mind in Nature, OUP, 2007. C.B. Martin died on October 23, 2008, barely a year after his magnum opus came out.  As Paul Snowdown writes in his obituary, Martin was one of the most “original, profound and important” philosophers of our time (hat tip Leiter Reports).  Yet for a …

Neuroscience Boot Camp at Penn

The University of Pennsylvania announces their Neuroscience Boot Camp, August 2-12, 2009. Why Neuroscience Boot Camp? Neuroscience is increasingly relevant to a number of professions and academic disciplines beyond its traditional medical applications.  Lawyers, educators, economists and businesspeople, as well as scholars of philosophy, sociology, applied ethics and policy, are …

Sociology and Economics as Branches of Physics

Mark Buchanan, The Social Atom: Why the Rich Get Richer, Cheaters Get Caught, and Your Neighbor Usually Looks Like You, New York: Bloomsbury, 2007. Buchanan is an American physicist and former editor of Nature.  In his latest book, he argues that the collective behavior of human beings can be understood …

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