Philosophy Carnival # 36
Here.
Author: Gualtiero Piccinini
Computation without Representation
As some of you may know, I am engaged in a long-term campaign against the view that concrete computations (computational states, computing mechanisms) are individuated, even in part, by their semantic properties. Of course, computations may be interpreted, i.e., assigned semantic content, but this is not part of their individuation. …
Feeling Someone Behind You Who Is Not There
Culture Dish comments on a fascinating finding by Swiss researchers, published in Nature and reported by the National Geographic. “[A]s a result of focal electrical stimulation of the left temporoparietal junction,” … they induced “[t]he strange sensation that somebody is nearby when no one is actually present”.
IJCNN 2007 Call For Papers
2007 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks Orlando, Florida August 12-17, 2007 Celebrating 20 years of Neural Networks! https://www.ijcnn2007.orgImportant Dates:Special Session and Panel Discussion Proposals: November 31, 2006Paper Submission: January 31, 2007Pre-Conference Tutorial and Post-Conference Workshop Proposals: January 31, 2007Decision Notification: March 31, 2007Camera-Ready Submission: April 30, 2007
Enigma Music
I just got a kick out of this (though with my usual caveats).
Competence, Computation, and Mechanistic Levels
I apologize for the long post. It’s inspired by an email exchange I’ve had with Anna-Mari Rusanen. One recurring theme in philosophy of cognitive science is David Marr’s distinction of computational, algorithmic, and implementational levels (from his book Vision, 1982). Sometimes people assimilate Marr’s computational level to Chomsky’s competence. …
Reduction, Emergence, Etc.
In Ken Aizawa’s simple (and in my opinion compelling) argument against the extended mind hypothesis applied to consciousness, he assumed that properties and relations of lower-level enties determine those of higher-level entities. In the comments, Adam Arico asked about emergence and Flora Carpenter further elaborated as follows: Higher level states may …