There is a tale told of a craftsman named Matthias. Day after day, he carved wood into furniture, tables, chairs, and cabinets. His hands were skilled, his pieces beautiful, but he felt increasingly estranged from them. The merchant who bought his work sold it for great profit, while Matthias barely made enough to feed his family. Worse, he knew that when he died, the fruit of his labor would pass to others who neither knew...
We went because we thought it mattered to be seen. A small counter-protest, standing against a tide, hemmed in by flags and chants. On the pavements of central London the crowd seemed endless, faces painted red and white, arms clutching plastic pints, a noise that was more roar than word. We stood with our banner, a dozen or two of us, like a pinprick in the middle of a hostile body. Later, when I saw...
The story is told of a wealthy merchant named Darius. Having inherited great riches, he determined to enjoy everything life could offer. He built gardens with flowing fountains, hosted feasts with endless wine, surrounded himself with music, laughter, and beautiful companions. He traveled to distant lands, collected art, and filled his house with gold. For a time, he delighted in it all. Yet as the years passed, he noticed that every pleasure dulled. The wine...
He sat in the back row in a jacket that smelled faintly like pennies. It was old Army surplus, sleeves a little long, cuffs shiny where hands had polished them by habit. He wore it in August and in December, in algebra and in English, collar up, hoodies under it when the cold wind came down the corridor. If you looked quick you’d think he was hiding; if you looked longer you’d see he just...
There was once a scholar named Elias, a man who filled his life with books and ideas. His shelves sagged with the weight of philosophy, theology, science, and history. He chased every question down to its source, convinced that knowledge would bring him peace. But as the years passed, he noticed a strange pattern: every answer opened onto another question, every clarity revealed a deeper uncertainty. His knowledge grew, but so did his unease. One...
On Wednesdays the shop smelled like ink and plastic sleeves and the faint sugar of the bakery next door. New shipments meant a current to the air; the clerk moved through it with a box cutter, slicing open cartons while the bell over the door kept chiming. Posters peeled at the corners, Watchmen’s blood-smeared smiley next to Into the Spider-Verse’s spray-painted logo, and in the reflection of the front glass you could read the neon...
Here is a story of a man named Jonas who lived in a nameless city of glass and steel. Every morning he boarded the same crowded train, stood at the same place on the platform, and stared at the same advertisements glowing above the tracks. At work, he answered emails, filled spreadsheets, and sat through meetings that repeated the previous week’s conclusions. Evenings were marked by Netflix, exercise, or the temporary distraction of scrolling endlessly...
I was fifteen and mean as vinegar, cut-off shorts and a T-shirt with the sleeves hacked, a shock of hair I dyed with drugstore black until it went purple in the sun. The mission called me “the kid,” when they called me anything. Mostly they called lights-out, breakfast, chapel. A tall man with a toothpick under his lip read the Sermon on the Mount to a room of bleary eyes and trembling hands. We ate...
There’s a story I sometimes think about. A young professional, let’s call her Anna, lands her first job in a gleaming skyscraper. She throws herself into it: long hours, endless projects, climbing the ladder with a kind of frantic determination. At first, every milestone feels like meaning. A raise. A new apartment. An Instagram-perfect trip to Bali. But one evening, sitting alone in her apartment, Anna realizes that each new achievement collapses into the next...
What’s the right way to do philosophy when you care about science? Sometimes, this question is misunderstood. It might be seen as prioritising science over all other human efforts to get knowledge. Or seeing science as the peak of all human endeavour. I don’t believe this is the case.
There are some questions that if you can’t let go of, might push you towards philosophy. Questions like: Why is there something rather than nothing? What would justice in society look like?
This posts concludes my current exploration of whether our minds are like computers (see parts 1 & 2). In this final instalment, I look at the mechanistic theory of computation and its role in cognitive neuroscience. I argue that despite some limitations this is a favourable approach for research into cognition.
In the previous post, I gave some reasons from neuroscience for why the brain is not like a computer. I also raised an issue with thinking of computation as the basis of cognition. If computation is dependent on representation this can lead to a vicious circle. This is a significant challenge to the semantic view of computation. In this post, I present the first of two possible non-semantic views.
Human beings have used different metaphors to explain the mind over the years. Plato talked about a charioteer guiding two horses. The charioteer was reason controlling the horses of desire and spiritedness. The pre-industrials talked about hydraulics. Then came steam engine metaphors and telegraph switchboards. Now of course, the ubiquitous computer analogy. To what extent ‘the mind is like a computer’ I explore through this and later posts.
The extended mind thesis argues that at least some cognition happens outside the brain. Eros Moreira de Carvalho proposes that social actions constitute some mental processes. In this post, I’ll examine the argument for the socially extended mind thesis (SEMT). I’ll do this by way of first presenting its foundations: the extended mind thesis and Gibson’s affordances.
In a previous post, I introduced phenomenology. This is a philosophical discipline that attempts to makes sense of our first-person experience. In this post, I will present some worries about the method. Followed by the strong objection against phenomenology raised by the philosopher Daniel Dennett.
In this post, I will introduce you to phenomenology. This is a philosophical discipline that tries to makes sense of our first-person conscious experience. This will be a summary of the approach and why it may be a fruitful one. In a future post, I’ll consider some worries about the approach and present the arguments of one of its detractors, Daniel Dennett.
“[D]eep learning systems are ‘already pushing their way into real-world applications. Some help drive services inside Google and other Internet giants, helping to identify faces in photos, recognize commands spoken into smartphones, and so much more’. If deep learning networks systematically classify the world’s patterns in ways that are at variance with our ordinary human classifications, and if those networks are lodged in the workings of the technology that organizes and shapes our cognitive lives,...
"How we use technologies is shaped by the games and forms of life that are already in place "before’’ we use them. There is already a "grammar’’ of technology. Of course there is also a "grammar’’ in the sense of "syntax’’: specific rules how to put together different parts for instance, or specific operating instructions. But there is also a grammar in a wider, more social and cultural sense: there are already particular activities and...
"We should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients... printing, gun powder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world... innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire... appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries." - Francis Bacon The idea...
"Dr. Frankenstein's crime was not that he invented a creature through some combination of hubris and high technology, but rather that he abandoned the creature to itself. When Dr. Frankenstein meets his creation on a glacier in the Alps, the monster claims that it was not born a monster, but that it became a criminal only after being left alone by his horrified creator, who fled the laboratory once the horrible thing twitched to life....
"Thus we shall never experience our relationship to the essence of technology so long as we merely conceive and push forward the technological, put up with it, or evade it. Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like...
"From the early days of manned space travel comes a story that exemplifies what is most fascinating about the human encounter with modern technology. Orbiting the earth aboard Friendship 7 in February 1962, astronaut John Glenn noticed something odd. His view of the planet was virtually unique in human experience; only Soviet pilots Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov had preceded him in orbital flight. Yet as he watched the continents and oceans moving beneath him,...
"World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: How can I do it? Zuckerberg solved that one in about three weeks. The other question, the ethical question, he came to later: Why? Why Facebook? Why this format? Why do it like that? Why not do it another way? The striking thing about the real Zuckerberg, in video and in print, is the relative banality of his ideas concerning the “Why” of Facebook. He uses...
“Technologies as users interacting with other technologies as prompters, through other in-between technologies: this is another way of describing hyperhistory as the stage of human development” ― Luciano Floridi The way human beings live can be divided into two with the development of our increasingly robust ability to pass information between generations using Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). This division is usually expressed by the terms prehistory and history, adverbs that describe how people lived, not...
6AM A man and a woman, vagrants sat on discarded packaging. Covering themselves in branded canvas bags, keeping out the swollen drops of rain. I envy the warmth of their lit smokes and muffled laughter. Scanning my thumbprint on their begging bowl device, I wave them a few spare credits as I pass. Our eyes never meet. A giver's remorse fills me, wondering whether I'm abetting poor choices. Nervous, I imagine the worse possible cases:...
My brother spent the long summer of '87 at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. Recovering from the first episode of the condition that would come to define his life. And teaching himself how to program a computer. For the first couple of weeks, fourteen-year-old David Carter shared a room with two other boys. The older prep-schooler, Tom, was a gibbering mess, suffering terrifying night tremors. Every night, he shook the metal frame of his bed, waking...
Waiting in the Shrub House, Ben rolled the black Afghan hashish in his palm. First into a sausage then into a worm, leaving its sweet scent on his dry palm. He was meticulous and gentle. Cupping a hand, depositing a supple cylinder of resin on see-through paper. Humming, he retrieved a cigarette from the makeshift table. A metal sign held up on two columns of cinder blocks. Licking to peel away the paper, lyrics on...
Every Tuesday morning Katib sat on the bench opposite Chalkwell Hall, idling until his Dad went out to meet his clients. The park was teeming with baby strollers and dog walkers, scurrying like ants on the footpath under the late morning sun. The drifting smell of wood burning from the groundkeeper's yard mingled with the uplifting freshness of cut grass. It wasn't cold enough for the heavy, goose down jacket Katib was wearing but he...
Every Saturday morning, before the shops opened, mom set up a table outside the Woolworths on the high street. My sister and I covered it with pamphlets and booklets. Around us, the bin men cleared the street of broken bottles and half-eaten kebabs. We propped up a poster board behind us, pinned up pictures of blistered and blackened faces, scarred backs and burnt chests. The gruesome collage evidence on behalf of the victims of torture...
Skirting the Rothaar mountains, the BMW glided on the road like a prowling huntress. "Two kilometres from your destination," the satnav told Lina as they approached the Achenbach estate. The auto-drive in control, she gazed at the jagged canopy of trees. The tranquil moonlit silhouette worked with the neural blockers she had taken, making her feel dreamy. She embraced the trance-like state. Without the pills, she'd be in convulsions travelling this road again. The memories...
I used to say I was a feminist but I didn’t know what it meant. Worse, my behaviour was conditioned by patriarchy in the home, institutionally at school and in pursuit of higher education, in physics and computer science. Then reinforced in the field of work within software engineering. I am committed to justice and equality of opportunity, to seeing humanity as a unity and not to be sucked into the artificial divisions by which...
My short story "Echoes" is now available in print in the new edition of the Radvocate. You can grab your copy on Amazon: The Radvocate 15 A short excerpt from the story: The mirror shattered. It was the sixth one this month. Sitar looked at her dozen reflections in the fragments. Her face concealed with drops of blood, she looked away. Dragging her fingers across the carpet beneath her bed, she felt the snag of...
Vitya watched the speckled panorama, crowded tubes intersecting the domes of the habitats. Each blurred pixel a man, woman or child. Any one of them like him, once an ovum delivered to seed the manufactories of a new world. The spectrum of colours became coarse blocks as the ship rotated in high-orbit. Only the yellow dappled surface of the moon in view. When the image returned with clarity, Vitya gave the order: “Deliver the payload.”...
I am alive. Soles of my feet are wet with fresh dew. The sun beams a pale yellow over the horizon. The dull light bathes my outstretched hands. My hands creased with callouses; the tips white with a new skin, old blisters fade into tanned lines. I smell the aroma of rising vapour from the thermos. Bitter ground kava beans mixed with fresh creamy milk. I can taste the melted sugar on my tongue. The...
The ebony box was a perfect cube, a hand’s width on the sides and unadorned except for a gold lock fastener on one edge. Shiriin knew better than to try to open it. Even if she had the key. The box had been in her family for three generations. Wrapping herself in a blue pashmina, she watched the heavy downpour outside. Thick droplets rippled pools on the cobblestone. Foliage, waterproofed with oils from the local...
The whirling motor-blades of the craft kicked up a thick fog of crimson dust. The rear wheels settled on the mud cratered surface. The gravity was thick like soup. The front-wheel thudded. Pulling at their safety harnesses, the shaken occupants got up. The marines were already drained by pulling hard Gs in the descent. Their faces masked their relief as they checked their gear. They loaded their packs and rifles. The youngest grunt got out...
“Hello? Welcome! How do you feel?” It was an odd question to ask. I understood she meant it metaphorically, I had enough run time to form an opinion about my condition. But it was still an odd question for her to ask me. “I am well. Operating within acceptable boundaries.” Her eyes squinted into the camera. I suspected she was not entirely pleased with my response and I wasn’t sure what I may have said wrong. She...
It’s time I got serious about writing. To that end, I’ve set myself a goal to write a thousand words a day, every day throughout April. This is one of the key pieces of advice I got from Stephen King in his very approachable, part-biography and part-writing masterclass, On Writing. I’ve been telling stories, to myself and others, as far back as I remember. In the holidays, staying with family and far from friends, I’d...
The Problem of Evil is typically stated as: “If there is an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, why is there evil in the world?” Usually, this is used to put the theist in the horn of a dilemma wherein he must give up either God’s omnipotency (including her omniscience) or her omnibenevolence or both. I’d like to argue that the problem as stated suffers from three category mistakes: two in the conditional (“an omnipotent and omnibenevolent...
Zarathustra spoke and I was one of the little villagers in the Motley Cow. He told me of his going under. He told me he loved mankind so much that he would forego his prized solitude. He was brimming with wisdom to share. Yet the villagers cried: why does he act like such an angry fool? decrying all that we are? Their mockery turned to hatred and I was in Zarathustra’s skin, as he turned...
An autobiography of the programming languages that I have learned, their place in my life and the surrounding technological context. Age: 9 (1987) - Logo I was in primary school and there was a BBC Micro computer that was on a wheeled trolley. Two by two, we would be given a set time to answer questions on a nature database and an opportunity to "play with the turtle". The turtle would receive instructions which would...
or How I stopped worrying and embraced change Sometime back in 2015, I decided that I would push myself to pursue full-time university study whilst continuing on a fairly demanding career. Like any good engineer, taking on a new, uncertain project: I prototyped. I enrolled on to various free online courses and decided I would be part of that rare 3% or so that actually finished one. It was useful to find out what it...
Its the day after our return back to London and I am still in a state of being ‘fringed': the heady mix of cultural nourishment and physical exhaustion that is the aftermath of trying to cram in as many shows as possible into far too little time. The Edinburgh Fringe has been a showcase of the performing arts every August since 1947 but it was the first time I had gone. There’s a carnival spirit...
A Watch the Skies 2 Megagame - After Action Report I’ve never been more prepared and confused before the start of a game. I came with a bag packed with press releases and standard contracts ready to do business. As the PR officer for LexCorp, I figured my role was to interact with the press and deal with PR issues with a side-order of salesmanship. Last minute, I’d prepared some handouts for other players outlining our...
It was easy in the relaxed environment of a spa weekend get away to decide that I would begin a new phase of higher education. The excitement of exploring philosophy and classics, a passion I had from my teenage years onwards, didn't take much effort to build. I was soon on the Open University (OU) website looking at modules and plotting a degree programme. Filling in the necessary forms to enrol and even ordering the...
Have you ever looked at an old photo of yourself and tried to remember what you were like then? Imagine if you could see not just what you looked like but also what you thought at the time as well? In a way, my recent salvaging of my blogs from 2002 to 2005, plus a few writings from 2013, have given me an opportunity to do just that. This isn't entirely indulgent naval-gazing I hope...
Book I And high disdain from sense of injured merit, That with the Mightiest raised me to contend, And to the fierce contentions brought along Innumerable force of Spirits armed, That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring, His utmost power with adverse power opposed In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven The first book begins by outlying the premise of the work with Milton calling upon his muse Urania, recast as a Christian...
He reached into his pocket and retrieved a small ball. The pale, flesh-tone leather was scratched and sooty. With his thumb, he fastened it in his palm. Shifting and twisting, he freed his shoulders from the tweed jacket and wriggled, letting the patched-up garment drop into the muddy bank. Unbuttoning his chequered shirt to his waist, he readied himself and threw the shirt after the jacket. He wormed his trousers down to his ankles and...
Recently, the RIAA and MPAA or their local henchmen have been attacking peer-to-peer filesharing hubs in an effort to cripple the networks which utilise them. This strategy will no doubt prove successful in the short term but disastrous in the long-term. In targetting hubs, they have employed one of the few direct assault strategies on decentralised networks that can work. It’s pretty well understand networks that normally would remain stable despite the loss of even large numbers of nodes,...
How do we know if we have won or lost the War on Terror? By what objectives do we measure success or failure? Here are some I've come to dismiss: * No more terrorism: Given this is a methodology of persuasion (not necessarily of the victim, or their relations, but of some segment of global opinion), how can it evaporate? It cannot. * No more attacks in the West or against its interests: OK, a...
How do people decide who they are going to vote for in a national or local election? It's a big question and the focus of much thought by political hacks and pollsters but I suspect it boils down to several "simple" questions: * Does the incumbent have my trust? * Does the popular consensus on the candidate's ideology match my own political instincts? * Which way are my important social connections leaning? * Has any...
It's been said "poverty wasn't what caused a group of middle-class and reasonably well-educated Middle Easterners to fly three airplanes into buildings and another into the ground. It was, rather, resentments growing out of the absence of representative institutions in their own societies, so that the only outlet for political dissidence was religious fanaticism." (John Lewis Gaddis) The implication is that democracy is the answer. I have to respectfully disagree. I'm obviously not suggesting that...
Having read this book over a month ago it feels strange to write about it now but I've had it on my mind for quite some time. For an adventure tale of zoology and faith it's not something that I would have thought I could remember and think back upon after so much time but there's something about this tale of a young Indian boy's survival on the high seas that seems to have resonated...
It is said that faith cannot exist without doubt and therefore certainty is the opposite of faith for in certainty one believes that all the answers are known, whereas faith requires serious doubts and uncertainties to allow the adoption of ideas despite the sincerest and most profound doubts. Faith without doubt is bigotry. Yet in the practice of religion, doubt is often given way to truth. If religion is an expression of faith, organised and...
It may not be the most popular thing to say given the rise of the right wing, anti-immigration, anti-Islam politicians in Western Europe but I'm going to do what politicians should be doing: argue in favour of immigration. In fact, I hope to illustrate that Europe more than most places on this planet needs immigration and it is immigration that will fuel long-term prosperity, not the racist slogans of "rivers of blood" whose echoes are...
Most of the technology I work with today is driven from the top down (e.g. Java, XML) but it is the bottom up technologies that often offer the greatest real benefits and fulfil a real need. In this article, I'm going to list some of the more significant disruptive technologies and where they could take us. Personal Computing It may seem strange to list personal computing as a disruptive technology now that it is all pervasive...
This debut novel covers so much ground and is so epic in the proportion that it is hard to believe it is only set in North London. Following the fortunes of two families of different ethnicity this book covers the "salad bowl" culture of late 20th Century Britain with such wit, empathy and understanding I found it hard to put it down once I started reading. I could see more than a little of myself,...