Ken Aizawa brought to my attention some claims made by Alva Noe in his new book, entitled Out of Our Heads. It’s a book for the general public, so we shouldn’t expect too much scholarly rigor. Nevertheless, there is no reason why it should be as sloppy as it is (on this issue). A section …
After an excellent SSPP run by Gualtiero (who deserves great thanks!), I thought a modestly humorous post from here in Savannah was in order: Here is a question, which I think suggests a funny criticism: if simulation does play a prominent role in mindreading (the attribution of mental states to …
European scientists are building silicon chips containing large scale artificial neural networks (200,000 neurons and 50 million synapses, scalable to a billion neurons and 10 to the 13 synapses). (Thanks to Neal Anderson for the link.) IBM scientists and working on “cognitive computing”, an attempt to build a new generation of …
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 …
Today’s NY Times has a nice article on recent evidence that contrary to popular belief (especially among philosophers), some animals have a form of episodic memory and the ability to plan for future events.
My colleague Bob Gordon is the originator of the simulation theory, one of the two main theories of folk psychology (the other being the theory theory). Aside from being an influential theory in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, in recent years the simulation theory has had a large impact on social robotics.Bob …
Following their discussion of the Inga-Otto thought experiment, Andy Clark and David Chalmers propose the following necessary and sufficient conditions for what information is to be a part of one’s cognitive apparatus: First, the notebook is a constant in Otto’s life – in cases where the information in the notebook …
