Paul Churchland Paul Churchland (born October 21, 1942) is a Canadian philosopher noted for his studies in neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind.[1] He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, where he held the Valtz Chair of Philosophy[2] and a joint appointment with the Cognitive Science Faculty and the Institute for Neural Computation.[3] He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh in 1969 under the direction of Wilfrid Sellars.[4] Churchland is the husband of philosopher Patricia Churchland. He is also the father of two children, Mark and Anne Churchland, both of whom are neuroscientists.[5][6][7] Professional career[edit] Philosophical views[edit] Just as modern science has discarded such notions as legends or witchcraft, Churchland holds the belief that a future, fully matured neuroscience is likely to have no need for "beliefs" (see propositional attitudes). Works[edit] Books[edit] Essays[edit] See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit]
Conscious Entities Kurt Gödel Kurt Friedrich Gödel (/ˈkɜrt ɡɜrdəl/; German: [ˈkʊʁt ˈɡøːdəl] ( ); April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was an Austrian, and later American, logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel made an immense impact upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell,[1] A. N. Whitehead,[1] and David Hilbert were pioneering the use of logic and set theory to understand the foundations of mathematics. Gödel published his two incompleteness theorems in 1931 when he was 25 years old, one year after finishing his doctorate at the University of Vienna. He also showed that neither the axiom of choice nor the continuum hypothesis can be disproved from the accepted axioms of set theory, assuming these axioms are consistent. Life[edit] Childhood[edit] In his family, young Kurt was known as Herr Warum ("Mr. Studying in Vienna[edit]
The Elephant in Our Skull « Three Pound Brain I am not a ‘Metzingerian.’ Like him, I think we are what we are in such a way that we cannot intuit what we are, but I came to this inkling by a far different route (Continental Philosophy). I’m not a representationalist, for one. In the old proverb of the three blind Indian gurus and the elephant, one grabs the tail and says the elephant is a rope, the other grabs a leg and says the elephant is a tree, while the third grabs the trunk and says the elephant is a snake. The reason they function is simply that they are systematically related to the elephant, who does the brunt of the work. This makes me an ‘eliminativist.’ Enter what I call Encapsulation, the strange mereological inflation that characterizes consciousness. The virtue of Encapsulation is that it allows us to explain why intentional concepts seem to have such an antipathy to causal explanation: intentional concepts are like magic tricks insofar as they depend on the absence of information to work. Like this: Like Loading...
Bertrand Russell Russell led the British "revolt against idealism" in the early 20th century.[58] He is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege, colleague G. E. Moore, and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein. He is widely held to be one of the 20th century's premier logicians.[55] With A. N. Russell was a prominent anti-war activist; he championed anti-imperialism[60][61] and went to prison for his pacifism during World War I.[62] Later, he campaigned against Adolf Hitler, then criticised Stalinist totalitarianism, attacked the involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War, and was an outspoken proponent of nuclear disarmament.[63] In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought Biography Early life and background Young Bertrand Russell Childhood and adolescence University and first marriage Early career Russell in 1907.
Electrocorticography Electrocorticography (ECoG), or intracranial EEG (iEEG), is the practice of using electrodes placed directly on the exposed surface of the brain to record electrical activity from the cerebral cortex. ECoG may be performed either in the operating room during surgery (intraoperative ECoG) or outside of surgery (extraoperative ECoG). Because a craniotomy (a surgical incision into the skull) is required to implant the electrode grid, ECoG is an invasive procedure. History[edit] ECoG was pioneered in the early 1950s by Wilder Penfield and Herbert Jasper, neurosurgeons at the Montreal Neurological Institute.[1] The two developed ECoG as part of their groundbreaking Montreal procedure, a surgical protocol used to treat patients with severe epilepsy. The cortical potentials recorded by ECoG were used to identify epileptogenic zones – regions of the cortex that generate epileptic seizures. Electrophysiological basis[edit] Procedure[edit] DCES[edit] Clinical applications[edit] Extraoperative ECoG
Rudolf Carnap Rudolf Carnap (May 18, 1891 – September 14, 1970) was a German-born philosopher who was active in Europe before 1935 and in the United States thereafter. He was a major member of the Vienna Circle and an advocate of logical positivism. Life and work[edit] Carnap's Birthplace in Wuppertal Carnap's father had risen from the status of a poor ribbon-weaver to become the owner of a ribbon-making factory. In 1928, Carnap published two important books: The Logical Structure of the World (German: "Der logische Aufbau der Welt"), in which he developed a rigorous formal version of empiricism, defining all scientific terms in phenomenalistic terms. In February 1930 Tarski lectured in Vienna, and during November 1930 Carnap visited Warsaw. Carnap, whose socialist and pacifist beliefs put him at risk in Nazi Germany, emigrated to the United States in 1935 and became a naturalized citizen in 1941. Carnap taught himself Esperanto when he was 14 years of age, and remained sympathetic to it (Carnap 1963).
Zynga’s Quest for Big-Spending Whales July 7 (Bloomberg BusinessWeek) -- Joelle Ibgui collects horses. Lots of horses. In her stable of 108 colorful creatures is a Clydesdale, an Asian wild foal, a spotted appaloosa, and a clown pony, which sports a bow tie, a red honk nose, and a rainbow-colored wig—and cost about $5. On July 1, Zynga filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise up to $1 billion in a sure-to-be blockbuster initial public offering. Although its games are free-to-play and widely accessible on Facebook, Zynga makes money by selling virtual items that are avidly hoarded by collectors, competitive players, and obsessives. Game makers don’t like to talk about whale management, but people familiar with Zynga say it does internally refer to its high-value customers as whales and has offered them membership in a VIP “Platinum” club. One person familiar with Zynga’s business, who requested not to be named because his company works with Zynga, says a user spent $75,000 in one year on a single game.
Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942)[1][2] is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relate to evolutionary biology and cognitive science.[3] Early life and education[edit] Dennett was born on March 28, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth Marjorie (née Leck) and Daniel Clement Dennett, Jr.[6][7] Dennett spent part of his childhood in Lebanon, where, during World War II, his father was a covert counter-intelligence agent with the Office of Strategic Services posing as a cultural attaché to the American Embassy in Beirut.[8] When he was five, his mother took him back to Massachusetts after his father died in an unexplained plane crash.[9] Dennett says that he was first introduced to the notion of philosophy while attending summer camp at age 11, when a camp counselor said to him, "You know what you are, Daniel? First ...
Commentary — Endgame Vol. 1 and 2 by Derrick Jensen | Steven Erikson Browse > Home / Non-Fiction / Commentary — Endgame Vol. 1 and 2 by Derrick Jensen The ramble below initially began as a personal letter to the author of Endgame by Derrick Jensen, published in 2006 by Seven Stories Press,a multi-volume treatise on civilization and its non-sustaining nature. It was basically written in two parts, the first being an ongoing commentary written while reading the books; and the second part a more direct ‘letter’ which I wrote after giving Jensen’s positions considerable thought, in particular his notions of how environmental destruction can end through the active destruction of civilization. Initially, I was responding to various assertions Jensen made regarding what he sees as the idyllic and only sustainable form of human culture: the hunter/gatherer society; and later to his avowed desire to return humanity to that state of existence. So, here it is. Feel free to comment. Cheers Steven Erikson I write novels under the name of Steven Erikson. 1. 2. 3. 4.
The metrics are the message: how analytics is shaping social games | Technology Picture this. You're deeply engaged in one of the many free-to-play adventure games available online, when you decide to buy a bigger sword. It could be that you made the tactical decision to extend your armoury, or that you panicked when you spotted a gigantic dragon lumbering in your direction; you might not even know why you did it. You just fancied a bigger sword. But that action took you into the barely two percent of free-to-play gamers who actually pay for content – and the game makers want to know why. The freemium gaming business is expanding rapidly. And what the big players have learned is that coming up with a great game concept is only the beginning. Alan Miller has been in the games business for over 30 years. "Our objective generally is to increase monetisation and improve player satisfaction," he explains. In his experience, it's rarely great big design errors that trip up growing freemium games – it's tiny, often over-looked alterations. It's a strange business.
who killed videogames? (a ghost story) | insert credit Chapters: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Next | “who killed videogames?” (a ghost story) by tim rogers figure one: satan. The smaller of the men was still talking about engagement wheels. “Look at this one,” he said. “I . . . The larger man spoke. “So after the first half hour, they get a push notification. The Other Men don’t make any sound. “They open the app. “Now the game tells them they’ve leveled up. “Here’s the important part. “Now they build the new thing, because it’s promising them a thousand coins per hour. “Now they can buy an upgrade — for 2,200 coins — so that their thing will make them 2,000 coins an hour instead of 1,000. “The player is almost hooked. “This is very important: now we give them something that gives them a reason to come back in two and a half hours. “If you can hook them for a day, you can hook them for two.” “And that’s where it becomes tricky,” the smaller of the men says. “We sell the in-game premium-currency units twenty for a dollar.” “How can you say that?”
amazon So what?: On Graham Harman’s Abominable Review of Laruelle’s Philosophies of Difference « An und für sich Imagine the expressions of apoplectic rage we would all discover on the various OOO blogs if Ray Brassier were to write a review of Harman’s Quadruple Object with the phrase, “And if Harman can respond to the criticism that his philosophy is not a substance based one, so what?” We all know that these are not calm men, that they bandy about the blogosphere chastising their critics in equal measure for not having read all their posts on topic X and for criticizing them on the basis of “just a blog post”.At the first sign of criticism they will jump behind any number of well-worn and tiring devices, almost immediately to the unassailable charge that the critic of their work has made it personal, while the progenitor of OOO has remained above the fray dealing only with the ideas of these abominable writers and Grand Moff Tarkins. That’s exactly how Harman has ended his awful review of Laruelle’s Philosophies of Difference. The second criticism is strange.