What, Why & How do we Know ?
Or even plain old post-autistic-rationality. I keep using the “scientific” meme in scare quotes … the idea that being hyper-rational, fundamentally-objectivist … the meme of using entirely deterministic and reductionist scientific arguments and logical induction … cannot be the basis of a high quality explanation in all but the simplest “scientific” context. (Every debate of … Continue reading “Post-Autistic-Memetics”
The following is the abstract from Douglas Hofstadter’s contribution to this year’s upcoming Science of Consciousness Conference, April 4th to 8th, Tucson 2006. (Followed by some other interesting abstracts.) (I had been kinda hoping I could be there, but it seems less and less likely as I approach my move to the US ironically.) Strange … Continue reading “Strange Loops and Distributed Consciousness”
Just started reading Dan Dennett’s 2003 “Freedom Evolves”. I’ve had it quite some time, but I’m not sure why I’ve only just picked it up. First off, it slays any doubts that Dennett is one of those who believes consciousness and free-will are illusory and in any sense non-existent. I always knew he was too … Continue reading “Free Will is Real”
For those who, like me, responded to Daniel Dennett’s 1991 “Consciousness Explained” with “Hardly” [*], I must heartily recommend his short 2005 book “Sweet Dreams – Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness” and his interview with Sue Blackmore in her 2005 “Conversations on Consciousness” as altogether more satisfying. As he admits “Fantasy Echo”, his … Continue reading “Fantasy Echoes of The Meme Machine”
And strangely enough, just yesterday, David Chalmers reviewed Jaegwon Kim’s “Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough” and accused him of being a “closet dualist”. The quote in the blog post title is from Kim’s closing paragraph. My only problem with Chalmers response here is the keeping score aspect of pigeonholeing people. If Kim is a physicalist, … Continue reading “No Credible Alternative To Physicalism”
Following my earlier rant on synthesising dualism, materialism and idealism, I came across this Searle paper linked from the Tucson 2006 “Towards a Science of Consciousness” conference programme. I’m guessing the paper is not new, but it’s undated. Strangely I agree almost entirely with his own introductory words about the relationship between brain and consciousness … Continue reading “Searle on Dualism”
Still Reading David Chalmers’ “The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory” after blogging about the intro earlier. It’s quite tough technically, as well as tough in terms of credibility. His appeals to logical possibility in his thought experiments stretch “conceivability” (and I never was very good with pure thought experiments, in the absence … Continue reading “I’ve Started So I’ll Finish”
Recently I commented on Owen Barfield labouring his point about the mental illusion of seeing an intangible rainbow, when his real point was that “seeing” a tree was no less a mental trick of “representation”, as is even the additional mental picture we create from the other sensory perceptions available to us for the apparently … Continue reading “An Illusion is Nevertheless Real”
I’ve now read about 40% of Searle’s “Mind”. For most of the first third he is outlining Philosophy of Mind issues, mainly stemming from Descartes (and other disasters, as he puts it). He outlines the classic mind / matter problems, the standard refutations, and his arguments against the refutations and alternatives. I found myself screaming … Continue reading “Searle in Denial ?”
From: Jorn Barger (jorn@enteract.com)Subject: Semantics and NLP Newsgroups: comp.ai.nat-langView: Complete Thread (19 articles) | Original Format Date: 2001-11-05 06:10:02 PST Judging from the replies I got to my recent ‘newsdiff’ posting, itappears university programs in AI are (still) doing an extremely bad jobof covering *semantics*… An unabridged dictionary may have half a million entries. Roget … Continue reading “Jorn’s Ontology”