Synthetic Biology Explained

The Politics of Vermin: Anarchism and Relinquishment

There’s a very interesting discussion of the merits of Marxism and an Anarchist-Green politics set out in John Zerzan’s book Twilight of the Machines (which I’ll admit to downloading, not reading!) over at the (Dis)loyal Opposition to Modernity. As I understand from the gloss in the DOM post, Zerzan views technology as inherently alienating and destructive […]

Neural Implant Can Recover Cognitive Processing

Here

EU backs Blue Brain and Graphene

Here  

Bruce Sterling and the Runaway Mind

Sterling thinks we’ll get technological manna without an intelligence explosion. George Dvorksy thinks he’s mistaken recursive intelligence amping for a dumb business model –here.

Vatted brains, simulated brains

According to Hilary Putnam, if we can think that we are brains in vats, we are not brains in vats because we cannot think about things like vats without having discriminating causal relationships with real vats (Reason, Truth and History, p.16) . How might Putnam’s argument apply to the claim that we could be living […]

Simulated Brain (SPAUN) demonstrates human-level abilities on simple reasoning tasks

HERE

David Deutsch on physical computation

Here

Important issue of the Journal of Cognitive Science

This issue looks like essential reading for anyone interested in the foundations of computationalism in Cog Sci and Phil Mind.

Post on protolanguage and experimental semiotics.

There’s a  précis of studies of the scope of possible communication systems by Gualtiero Piccinini over at Brains. Looks fascinating.