Arlindo Oliveira
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262036030
- eISBN:
- 9780262338394
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036030.001.0001
- Subject:
- Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
This book addresses the connections between computers, life, evolution, brains, and minds. Digital computers are recent and have changed our society. However, they represent just the latest way to ...
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This book addresses the connections between computers, life, evolution, brains, and minds. Digital computers are recent and have changed our society. However, they represent just the latest way to process information, using algorithms to create order out of chaos. Before computers, the job of processing information was done by living organisms, which are nothing more than complex information processing devices, shaped by billions of years of evolution. The most advanced of these information processing devices is the human brain. Brains enable humans to process information in a way unparalleled by any other species, living or extinct, or by any existing machine. They provide humans with intelligence, consciousness and, some believe, even with a soul. Brains also enabled humans to develop science and technology to a point where it is possible to design computers with a power comparable to that of the human brain. Machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies will one day make it possible to create intelligent machines and computational biology will one day enable us to model, simulate, and understand biological systems and even complete brains, with unprecedented levels of detail. From these efforts, new minds will eventually emerge, minds that will emanate from the execution of programs running in powerful computers. These digital minds may one day rival our own, become our partners, and replace humans in many tasks. They may usher in a technological singularity, may make humans obsolete or even a threatened species. They make us super-humans or demi-gods.Less
This book addresses the connections between computers, life, evolution, brains, and minds. Digital computers are recent and have changed our society. However, they represent just the latest way to process information, using algorithms to create order out of chaos. Before computers, the job of processing information was done by living organisms, which are nothing more than complex information processing devices, shaped by billions of years of evolution. The most advanced of these information processing devices is the human brain. Brains enable humans to process information in a way unparalleled by any other species, living or extinct, or by any existing machine. They provide humans with intelligence, consciousness and, some believe, even with a soul. Brains also enabled humans to develop science and technology to a point where it is possible to design computers with a power comparable to that of the human brain. Machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies will one day make it possible to create intelligent machines and computational biology will one day enable us to model, simulate, and understand biological systems and even complete brains, with unprecedented levels of detail. From these efforts, new minds will eventually emerge, minds that will emanate from the execution of programs running in powerful computers. These digital minds may one day rival our own, become our partners, and replace humans in many tasks. They may usher in a technological singularity, may make humans obsolete or even a threatened species. They make us super-humans or demi-gods.
Barry Stroud
- Published in print:
- 1984
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198247616
- eISBN:
- 9780191598494
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198247613.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Chapter 2 focuses on the challenge to the sceptical reasoning that what Descartes says is a requirement for everyday knowledge of the world – and would destroy all everyday knowledge of the world if ...
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Chapter 2 focuses on the challenge to the sceptical reasoning that what Descartes says is a requirement for everyday knowledge of the world – and would destroy all everyday knowledge of the world if it were a genuine requirement because it cannot be fulfilled – is in fact no such requirement at all.A particularly persuasive and influential version of that line of criticism is found in the work of J. L. Austin, who in his paper ‘Other Minds’ tries to show how the traditional philosophical investigation of knowledge significantly deviates from our normal practices. Austin observes that in our ordinary assessments of claims to knowledge we always presuppose a specific doubt about some specific knowledge claim, and he insists that a specific doubt about a specific knowledge claim can only be raised if there is some reason to think that a specific possibility that would undermine that knowledge claim actually obtains; if so, it would seem that there is no room for doubts about knowledge claims that rest on purely abstract considerations about possiblities that might obtain, or cannot be excluded, and therefore no room for a completely general scepticism of the kind Descartes envisions.Drawing a distinction between conditions of assertion and conditions of truth, Stroud argues that even if we grant the point Austin makes about our ordinary assessments of knowledge it still does not follow that Descartes deviates in his reasoning from our everyday standards and procedures and changes or distorts the meaning of the word ‘know’. The requirement that there must be some ‘special reason’ for thinking a certain possibility might obtain should be seen as a requirement on the appropriate or reasonable assertion of knowledge, but not necessarily as a requirement on knowledge itself; and if the possibility that one is dreaming is a possibility that one must know not to obtain if one is to know something about the world, as the sceptic can plausibly insist it is, then one will simply not know that thing about the world if one has not been able to eliminate that possibility – even though it might be completely inappropriate or unreasonable on particular occasions in everyday life to insist on ruling out that possibility before saying that one knows.Less
Chapter 2 focuses on the challenge to the sceptical reasoning that what Descartes says is a requirement for everyday knowledge of the world – and would destroy all everyday knowledge of the world if it were a genuine requirement because it cannot be fulfilled – is in fact no such requirement at all.
A particularly persuasive and influential version of that line of criticism is found in the work of J. L. Austin, who in his paper ‘Other Minds’ tries to show how the traditional philosophical investigation of knowledge significantly deviates from our normal practices. Austin observes that in our ordinary assessments of claims to knowledge we always presuppose a specific doubt about some specific knowledge claim, and he insists that a specific doubt about a specific knowledge claim can only be raised if there is some reason to think that a specific possibility that would undermine that knowledge claim actually obtains; if so, it would seem that there is no room for doubts about knowledge claims that rest on purely abstract considerations about possiblities that might obtain, or cannot be excluded, and therefore no room for a completely general scepticism of the kind Descartes envisions.
Drawing a distinction between conditions of assertion and conditions of truth, Stroud argues that even if we grant the point Austin makes about our ordinary assessments of knowledge it still does not follow that Descartes deviates in his reasoning from our everyday standards and procedures and changes or distorts the meaning of the word ‘know’. The requirement that there must be some ‘special reason’ for thinking a certain possibility might obtain should be seen as a requirement on the appropriate or reasonable assertion of knowledge, but not necessarily as a requirement on knowledge itself; and if the possibility that one is dreaming is a possibility that one must know not to obtain if one is to know something about the world, as the sceptic can plausibly insist it is, then one will simply not know that thing about the world if one has not been able to eliminate that possibility – even though it might be completely inappropriate or unreasonable on particular occasions in everyday life to insist on ruling out that possibility before saying that one knows.
Tony Shaw
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748625239
- eISBN:
- 9780748670918
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748625239.003.0009
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores why and how the Hollywood Cold War deviance in the 1950s had developed a sharper edge by the mid-1970s. It specifically addresses Peter Davis' Vietnam documentary Hearts and ...
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This chapter explores why and how the Hollywood Cold War deviance in the 1950s had developed a sharper edge by the mid-1970s. It specifically addresses Peter Davis' Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds and Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor. ‘New Hollywood’ played in the generational shift within the film industry. Hearts and Minds is at once starkly frank yet indirect in its propagandistic approach. It exhibits the degree to which the American intervention was driven by a long-standing, nationwide anti-Asian racism. It is considered today as a masterpiece of political documentary filmmaking, and is widely regarded as the definitive American documentary about the war in Vietnam. Three Days of the Condor contains all the trademark features of the 1970s ‘paranoid’ movie. Its political vision had its limits. Neither these two could be described as anti-capitalist, still less pro-communist.Less
This chapter explores why and how the Hollywood Cold War deviance in the 1950s had developed a sharper edge by the mid-1970s. It specifically addresses Peter Davis' Vietnam documentary Hearts and Minds and Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor. ‘New Hollywood’ played in the generational shift within the film industry. Hearts and Minds is at once starkly frank yet indirect in its propagandistic approach. It exhibits the degree to which the American intervention was driven by a long-standing, nationwide anti-Asian racism. It is considered today as a masterpiece of political documentary filmmaking, and is widely regarded as the definitive American documentary about the war in Vietnam. Three Days of the Condor contains all the trademark features of the 1970s ‘paranoid’ movie. Its political vision had its limits. Neither these two could be described as anti-capitalist, still less pro-communist.
Daniel D. Hutto and Glenda Satne
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262035552
- eISBN:
- 9780262337120
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035552.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Radically Enactive Cognition, REC, holds that not all forms of cognition are content involving and, especially, not root forms. According to radical enactivists, only minds that have mastered special ...
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Radically Enactive Cognition, REC, holds that not all forms of cognition are content involving and, especially, not root forms. According to radical enactivists, only minds that have mastered special kinds of socio-cultural practice are capable of content involving forms of cognition. This paper addresses criticisms that have been leveled at REC’s vision of how content-involving cognition may have come on the scene. It responds, in the first section, to the charge that REC faces a fatal dilemma when it comes to accounting for the origins of content in naturalistic terms—a dilemma that arises from REC’s own acknowledgment of the existence of a Hard Problem of Content. In subsequent sections, the paper addresses the charge that REC entails continuity skepticism, reviewing this charge in its scientific and philosophical formulations. It is concluded that REC is not at odds with evolutionary continuity, when both REC and evolutionary continuity are properly understood. It is also concluded that although REC cannot completely close the imaginative gap that is required to answer the philosophical continuity skeptic it is, in this respect, in no worse a position than its representationalist rivals and their naturalistic proposals about the origins of content.Less
Radically Enactive Cognition, REC, holds that not all forms of cognition are content involving and, especially, not root forms. According to radical enactivists, only minds that have mastered special kinds of socio-cultural practice are capable of content involving forms of cognition. This paper addresses criticisms that have been leveled at REC’s vision of how content-involving cognition may have come on the scene. It responds, in the first section, to the charge that REC faces a fatal dilemma when it comes to accounting for the origins of content in naturalistic terms—a dilemma that arises from REC’s own acknowledgment of the existence of a Hard Problem of Content. In subsequent sections, the paper addresses the charge that REC entails continuity skepticism, reviewing this charge in its scientific and philosophical formulations. It is concluded that REC is not at odds with evolutionary continuity, when both REC and evolutionary continuity are properly understood. It is also concluded that although REC cannot completely close the imaginative gap that is required to answer the philosophical continuity skeptic it is, in this respect, in no worse a position than its representationalist rivals and their naturalistic proposals about the origins of content.
Stella Bolaki
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781474402422
- eISBN:
- 9781474418591
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474402422.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The key focus of this chapter is Animated Minds (2003), a series of short documentaries created in the UK to raise public awareness of different forms of mental distress including schizophrenia, ...
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The key focus of this chapter is Animated Minds (2003), a series of short documentaries created in the UK to raise public awareness of different forms of mental distress including schizophrenia, agoraphobia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and self-harm. These documentaries were created in a collaborative manner, and use real testimony for their soundtrack and various animation techniques by professional animators. By bringing together scholarship on the animated documentary as a genre and on witnessing in illness narratives, the analysis examines the animated documentary’s evocative power, which allows it to penetrate subjective experiences that are difficult to represent, and the ethical encounters it stages for viewers. As the only chapter of this book to explicitly discuss mental health issues, it also returns to common critiques of narrative/narrativity in the field of illness narratives, specifically the problematic assumption that certain forms of mental distress are inherently ‘anti-narrative’. By looking closely at the Animated Minds audio testimonies, the chapter underlines the urgency of paying attention to such narratives and the experiences they document, many of which are surrounded with stigma, beyond an emphasis on pathology.Less
The key focus of this chapter is Animated Minds (2003), a series of short documentaries created in the UK to raise public awareness of different forms of mental distress including schizophrenia, agoraphobia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and self-harm. These documentaries were created in a collaborative manner, and use real testimony for their soundtrack and various animation techniques by professional animators. By bringing together scholarship on the animated documentary as a genre and on witnessing in illness narratives, the analysis examines the animated documentary’s evocative power, which allows it to penetrate subjective experiences that are difficult to represent, and the ethical encounters it stages for viewers. As the only chapter of this book to explicitly discuss mental health issues, it also returns to common critiques of narrative/narrativity in the field of illness narratives, specifically the problematic assumption that certain forms of mental distress are inherently ‘anti-narrative’. By looking closely at the Animated Minds audio testimonies, the chapter underlines the urgency of paying attention to such narratives and the experiences they document, many of which are surrounded with stigma, beyond an emphasis on pathology.
Charles Barbour
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474424998
- eISBN:
- 9781474434911
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474424998.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter takes up a number of issues around the question of secrecy and deception that have vexed recent analytic philosophers, and shows how Derrida might contribute to the debates. In ...
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This chapter takes up a number of issues around the question of secrecy and deception that have vexed recent analytic philosophers, and shows how Derrida might contribute to the debates. In particular, if focuses on ‘the problem of other minds’, and takes Derrida’s reading of Gadamer as a way into that problem.Less
This chapter takes up a number of issues around the question of secrecy and deception that have vexed recent analytic philosophers, and shows how Derrida might contribute to the debates. In particular, if focuses on ‘the problem of other minds’, and takes Derrida’s reading of Gadamer as a way into that problem.
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226239682
- eISBN:
- 9780226239705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226239705.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
“Suspicious Minds” is not a movie, but a song, Elvis Presley's seventeenth, and last, number-one record that topped the charts on November 1, 1969, two days before Richard Nixon went on national ...
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“Suspicious Minds” is not a movie, but a song, Elvis Presley's seventeenth, and last, number-one record that topped the charts on November 1, 1969, two days before Richard Nixon went on national television to deliver an address invoking “the great silent majority of Americans.” As a presence in the American psyche, Elvis had no show business rival; yet his movie career, while certainly a part of his fame, was more a tribute to his popularity than a major contributor to it. In his autobiography, Starmaker, Hal Wallis, who first signed Elvis to a movie contract and produced nine of his films, nicely illustrates Mordden's Old Cinema/New Age dichotomy. Like most of the characters he played onscreen, Elvis came from just the kind of patriotic, working-class, southern background that Nixon saw as the foundation of the new majority he successfully brought together in 1972, the new majority he hoped would replace the one Franklin Roosevelt had made the dominant factor in presidential politics forty years earlier.Less
“Suspicious Minds” is not a movie, but a song, Elvis Presley's seventeenth, and last, number-one record that topped the charts on November 1, 1969, two days before Richard Nixon went on national television to deliver an address invoking “the great silent majority of Americans.” As a presence in the American psyche, Elvis had no show business rival; yet his movie career, while certainly a part of his fame, was more a tribute to his popularity than a major contributor to it. In his autobiography, Starmaker, Hal Wallis, who first signed Elvis to a movie contract and produced nine of his films, nicely illustrates Mordden's Old Cinema/New Age dichotomy. Like most of the characters he played onscreen, Elvis came from just the kind of patriotic, working-class, southern background that Nixon saw as the foundation of the new majority he successfully brought together in 1972, the new majority he hoped would replace the one Franklin Roosevelt had made the dominant factor in presidential politics forty years earlier.
