This talk introduces a recent book by Dennett, rehashing and updating his theories on the mind. I have the hard copy of the book on order. These comments refer to his summary of it delivered as part of the Google Talks series. It is much to Dennett's credit that, as he goes along, his ideas become more precise and articulate. His examples are more apt, his analogies closer to the "essence". He never seems to say, "I was totally wrong about this", but he does make progress - partly by not taking himself too seriously. It is much to Dennett's credit that he is rarely caught in an "argument" -- he sees an element of truth in almost everything, always putting his own ideas on the table without allowing opposition to get personal. This is good because he gets a lot of opposition. " Consciousness Explained " (1991) was a serious over-reach. Rather a mess that didn't come close to delivering on the promise in its title. Yet, in the interveni

I want to make a brief note of the concept of "Animus". I'm almost pulling this term out of thin air to refer to an idea that is still crystallizing. The word does already have meanings and connotations which I will comment on when the  opportunity presents itself. At the core of the idea is recognition of a "system" that shows intentional behavour. Lately I have been using "system" in preference to "thing" because I recognize that nothing really exists in isolation. We recognize a system by (somewhat arbitrarily) drawing a line around all the forms and relationships that determine the dynamic behavour of those forms and relationships (i.e., how they change with time). Animus refers (or does it?) to the property of a system's behavour that cannot easily be described without reference to the future state of the system. The system is behaving in a way that tends to bring about some future states of affairs rather than others. One might say

Most of us (sadly not all of us) are familiar with the experience of not knowing something. Few of us are intimately familiar with the concept that some things are objectively true or false but  unknowable. Apart from purely religious word game, we rarely try to imagine how the simple fact of human architecture could prevent us from knowing ore even suspecting important facts about reality. This is not about our weak abilities of perception. It's about the limitations of what we can imagine. Trying to imaginine the unimaginable Consider the poor Golden Doodle, lets call her HEX. Doors and gates are super important to HEX. In fact they keep her alive in a way she cannot possibly understand. Yet she is always experiencing doors. It's amusing to see her mind work as she tries to wrap her mind around this concept. She knows, for example, that doors are a transition from one space to another. She has also figured out that she needs permission to go through a door. In a house she has

Virtualization is a huge topic, worthy of a dozen posts, but let me sketch it out here in the hope of making some details clear later. ARCHITECTURE I'm no fan of using computers as models of "mind". Our minds are not computers, nor do I expect that the AI dream of making a mind out of computer chips will happen any time soon. However, it is clear that both computers and minds process "information" in some broad sense of the term and we should not be surprised to find that designers of computers and "mother nature", the "designer" of our minds, have face similar problems and come up with similar solutions. COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE If you know a bit about computers, you know a bit about "virtualization" in computer design. The Central Processing Unit (CPU) of a computer manipulates a very small amount of information very quickly. This information is swapped in and out of the CPU from "on board" memory - Random Access Memory or

For some reason I was thinking of the tragedy at Jonestown today. In November, 1978, over 900 people killed themselves, were murdered by guards or killed by their parents in one of the major horrors of the decade. Bottom line is that religion can be and often is a death cult. This is an observation discussed recently by Sam Harris , who keeps coming back to the fact that crazy ideas lead to crazy behavour and are therefore not to be given the tolerance that liberal philosophy so often grants them. I lament the centuries that philosophers spent in the swamps of Christian "theology", When Christianity married itself to political power, two millennia of religious wars were born. First heretics were stamped out to produce what is now considered to be "orthodox"mythical nonsense like the trinity. Then we had a few centuries of the Crusades to "save" the Holy lands. With the "Reformation", the death cult of religion married itself to the lust for power

The Basic BOID Boids are an artificial intelligence entity that simulates flock activity. Very complex and realistic flock activity can be generated from very simple rules -- from Wikipedia: separation :  steer  to avoid crowding local flockmates alignment : steer towards the average heading of local flockmates cohesion : steer to move toward the average position (center of mass) of local flockmates More complex rules can be added, such as obstacle avoidance and goal seeking. Boid-like rules and flock behavour can easily be observed in human populations. Separation, Alignment and Cohesion in typical human settlement  Humans demonstrate how human intelligence allows us to flock more perfectly than birds. Being so much smarter than birds, fish and bacteria, humans are able to flock in complex non-physical  dimensions to produce flocks like political parties, corporations and nation-states. However the principles of separation, alignment and cohesion still apply. No good human flocker wan