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God, Approximately, by Brian Cantwell Smith
God, Approximately • 4 Brian Cantwell Smith* Preamble Consider the rise of the religious right: Muslim and Hindu fundamentalism, right-wing Zionism, the Christian moral majority. These movements are re- sponding to—and exploiting—a widespread social hunger: a sense that reign- ing secular, scientific, and capitalist world views don’t supply what matters: ways to tell right from wrong, guidance to anchor individual lives and give them meaning, the wherewithal to resolve ethical dilemmas. I find many of the fundamentalists’ answers appalling: bigoted, mean- spirited, scary. But what are those of us on the left—we scientists, we intellec- tuals, we in the academy—doing about this heartfelt lack? If we don’t recog- nise (and respond to) the yearning—if, willfully or unwittingly, we remain blind to the hunger—then we have no leg to stand on, in criticising others' replies. What we need are better answers: frameworks to stir compassion, give meaning to lives, combat prejudice, secure a modicum of economic well- being, preserve the planet. These frameworks must be global; it is too late for parochial sectarianism. And they must build on the best in science. We need to move forwards, not back. This talk is offered as a step in that direction. (A note to those who are allergic to religious language: you have my sympathy. In fact you almost have my company. But I have come to believe that the questions *Cognitive Science, Computer Science, and Philosophy Comments welcome Indiana University, Bloomington, in 47405 use [email protected] Copyright © 1998 Brian Cantwell Smith Version of November 24, 1998 Note: Several different versions of this paper—or rather, different papers with the title “God, Approximately”—have been presented over the past year. -
The Foundations of Computing
Draft: version 0,94 (b) Not for distribution, citation, or … Comments welcome The Foundations of Computing Brian Cantwell Smith* Computer and Cognitive Science Departments Indiana University, Bloomington, in 47405 usa Will computers ever be conscious? Is it appro- 1. Empirical: It must do justice to computa- priate—correct, illuminating, ethical—to un- tional practice (e.g., be capable of explaining derstand people in computational terms? Will Microsoft Word: the program, its construc- quantum, dna, or nanocomputers radically alter tion, maintenance, and use); our conception of computation? How will com- 2. Conceptual: It must discharge all intellectual puting affect science, the arts, intellectual his- debts (e.g., to semantics), so that we can un- tory? derstand what it says, where it comes from, I have never known how to answer these what it costs; and questions, because I have never been sure what computation is. More than twenty-five years 3. Cognitive: It must provide a tenable founda- ago, this uncertainty led me to undertake a tion for the computational theory of long-term investigation of the foundations of mind—the thesis, sometimes known as “cog- computer science and artificial intelligence. nitivism,” that underlies artificial intelligence That study is now largely complete. My aim in and cognitive science. this paper is to summarise some of the results.1 The first, empirical, requirement, of doing jus- tice to practice, helps to keep the analysis 1. Project grounded in real-world examples. It is hum- bling, too, since the computer revolution so reli- The overall goal has been to develop a compre- ably adapts, expands, dodges expectations, and hensive theory of computation. -
Archetype and Stereotype in the Fantasies of Fritz Leiber
DIVINATION AND SELF-THERAPY: ARCHETYPE AND STEREOTYPE IN THE FANTASIES OF FRITZ LEIBER by Bruce Byfield B. A., Simon Fraser University, 1981 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (ENGLISH) in the Department of English @ Bruce Byfield, 1989 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY July, 1989 All rights reserved. his work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL TITLE OF THESIS: Ijiv~naricmand Self -'f herapy: Archetype and Stereotype In the k'antasies of' Fritz Leitwr Esaminir~gCommirtcc: Chair: Chin B~merjec PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser Universlty the right to lend my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown below) to users ot the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of Its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publlcation of this work for financial gain shal l not be allowed without my written permlssion. Author: (s ignatureY iii Although Fritz Leiber is influential in modern fantasy, his 50 year career is largely unassessed. His work is hard to judge, because it varies greatly in length, mood and style, and assumes that readers know both science fiction and orthodox literature. -
A Literary Newton: a Suggestion for a Critical Appraisal of Fritz Leiber
Volume 17 Number 1 Article 9 Fall 10-15-1990 A Literary Newton: A Suggestion for a Critical Appraisal of Fritz Leiber Bruce Byfield Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Byfield, Bruce (1990) A" Literary Newton: A Suggestion for a Critical Appraisal of Fritz Leiber," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 17 : No. 1 , Article 9. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Deplores the dearth of serious critical attention to the writings of Leiber and speculates about the reasons for this. Gives an overview of his career that suggests avenues for future critical analysis. Additional Keywords Leiber, Fritz—Biography; Leiber, Fritz—Criticism and interpretation This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. -
Implementation Is Semantic Interpretation: Further Thoughts
Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 17, No. 4, December 2005, 385–417 Implementation is semantic interpretation: further thoughts WILLIAM J. RAPAPORT* Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Department of Philosophy, and Center for Cognitive Science, 201 Bell Hall, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-2000, USA (Received June 2005; in final form August 2005) This essay explores the implications of the thesis that implementation is semantic interpretation. Implementation is (at least) a ternary rela- tion: I is an implementation of an ‘Abstraction’ A in some medium M. Examples are presented from the arts, from language, from computer science and from cognitive science, where both brains and computers can be understood as implementing a ‘mind Abstraction’. Implementations have side effects due to the implementing medium; these can account for several puzzles surrounding qualia. Finally, an argument for benign panpsychism is developed. Keywords: Implementation; Panpsychism; Qualia; Semantic interpretation; Simulation; Syntactic semantics 1. Implementation, semantics and syntactic semantics In an earlier essay (Rapaport 1999), I argued that implementation is semantic interpretation. The present essay continues this line of investigation. What is an implementation? Let us begin by considering some examples. Table 1 shows pairs of syntactic and semantic domainsy that are clear examples in which the semantic domain (or model) implements the syntactic domain (or formal system) (cf. Rapaport 1995 for a more elaborate survey). The first three are paradigmatic cases: we implement an algorithm when we express it in a computer programming language; we implement a program when we compile and execute it; and we implement an abstract data type such as a stack when we write code (in some programming language) that specifies how the various stack operations *Email: [email protected]ffalo.edu yI explain my use of these terms in section 1.3. -
Of Minds and Language
Of Minds and Language Noam Chomsky This article reviews, and rethinks, a few leading themes of the biolinguistic program since its inception in the early 1950s, at each stage influenced by developments in the biological sciences. The following also discusses how the questions now entering the research agenda develop in a natural way from some of the earliest concerns of these inquiries. Keywords: biolinguistics; I-language; mind; minimalism I have been thinking about various ways to approach this opportunity,1 and on balance, it seemed that the most constructive tack would be to review, and rethink, a few leading themes of the biolinguistic program since its inception in the early 1950s, at each stage influenced by developments in the biological sciences. And to try to indicate how the questions now entering the research agenda develop in a natural way from some of the earliest concerns of these inquiries. Needless to say, this is from a personal perspective. The term “biolinguistics” itself was coined by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini as the topic for an international conference in 1974 (Piattelli-Palmarini 1974) that brought together evolutionary biologists, neuroscientists, linguists, and others concerned with language and biology, one of many such initiatives, including the Royaumont conference that Massimo brought up (Piattelli-Palmarini 1980). As you know, the 1950s was the heyday of the behavioral sciences. B.F. Skinner’s William James lectures, which later appeared as Verbal Behavior (Skinner 1957), were widely circulated by 1950, at least in Cambridge, Mass., and soon became close to orthodoxy, particularly as the ideas were taken up by W.V. -
Reflection and Sentantics in Lisp Brian Cantwell Smith XEROX Pale
Reflection and Sentantics in Lisp Brian Cantwell Smith XEROX Pale Alto Research Center 3333 Coyote Hill Road. Pale Alto. CA 94304; and Center for the Study of l.anguage and Information Stantbrd University. Stanlbrd. CA 94305 and continuation char;wtcrising the state of the computation at 1. Introduction that pui,~t. Thus, such constructs as ttmow and C,~TCII, which l"or three reasons, bi.';p's self-refi;rential properl.ies have not must otherwise be providt,d primitively, can in 3-Lisp be easily led to a general un(h:rst.auding of what it is fro" a cmuputational defined a:; user procedures (and defined, furthermore, in code system to reason, in substantial way~, about its; owe operations that is ~,!most isomorphic to the ~-calculus. equations one a,ul structures. First., there is more to reasoning than reference; normally writes, in the metalal'$,3~a!,'c, to describe them). And one also needs a theory, in terms of which to make .,~ense of the all this can be dolte wilhout writing the entire program in a referenced domain. A comln, ter system able to reason about centinuation-pas:;iz~g :~tyle, o!' the sort illu,;trated in [Steele it.:;elf- what I will call a reflective system -- will therefore 197til. The point is no!. to decide at the outset what should and need an account of itself embedded within it. Second, there what should not be explicit (in Steele's example, continuations most he a systematic relationship between that embedded must be passed arouml explicitly from the hcgim, ing). -
The Allure of the Eccentric in the Poetry and Fiction of Fritz Leiber Thank God for All the Screwballs, Especially the Brave Ones Who Never Flinch, Who Never
Bruce Byfield [email protected] (604) 421-7177 The Allure of the Eccentric in the Poetry and Fiction of Fritz Leiber Thank God for all the screwballs, especially the brave ones who never flinch, who never lose their tempers or drop the act, so that you never do quite find out whether it’s just a gag or their solemnest belief. - Fritz Leiber, The Oldest Soldier Fritz Leiber’s poems are not his best-known work. Published long after his reputation was made, they are few in number and were originally published in small press limited editions: Sonnets to Jonquil and All and The Demons of the Upper Air. They vary widely in quality, from amateur-sounding lyrics whose compression of meaning is awkward and sometimes unintentionally humorous, such as Sonnets to Jonquil’s “The Midnight Wall”or “1959: The Beach at Santa Monica,” to the highly-polished and original The Demons of the Upper Air. Yet, despite their small number and variable quality, Leiber’s poems are worth studying as a kind of summary of his entire body of work. They express in concentrated form many of the concerns and attitudes that inform the rest of his work, including the Jungian obsession with the Anima and the Shadow that underpins much of his best-known work. But perhaps the most obvious reoccurring motif in Leiber’s poetry is one that has so far attracted little attention: Leiber’s defense and love of eccentricity and non-conformity. Science fiction and fantasy,of course, are full of stories of the lone, often persecuted individual, but, in Leiber’s work, the defence of the loner or the person who is different is more than just a convention. -
Marx's Social Ontology Individuality and Community in Marx's Theory of Social Reality Carol C. Gould
Marx's Social Ontology Individuality and Community in Marx's Theory of Social Reality Carol C. Gould The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England THOMAS COOPER LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLI"'" COLUMBIA. S.C. 29208 il Earlier versions of chapters 1, 2, and 4 were originally presented as a series of lectures To my mother and in memory of my father sponsored by the Department of Philosophy of the City University of New York Graduate Center, New York, March 5, 12, and 19, 1975. Copyright © 1978 by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in VIP Times Roman by The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc., printed and bound by Halliday Lithograph Corporation in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gould, Carol C Marx's social ontology. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883-0ntology. 2. Communism and society. 3. Ontology. L Title. B3305.M74G65 111 78-4614 ISBN 0-262-07071-5 Contents Acknowledgments IX Introduction xi 1 The Ontology of Society: Individuals, Relations and the Development of Community I 2 The Ontology of Labor: Objectification, Technology and the Dialectic of Time 40 3 Toward a Labor Theory of Cause: Action and Creation in Marx's Social Ontology 69 4 The Ontology of Freedom: Domination, Abstract Freedom and the Emergence of the Social individual to I 5 The Ontology of Justice: Social Interaction, Alienation and the Ideal of Reciprocity 129 Notes 179 Bibliography 188 Index 195 Acknowledgments I would first like to thank Marx Wartofsky of the Department of Philosophy, Boston University, for his immensely helpful comments on the manuscript and for extensive discussions that illuminated sev eral difficult issues in the interpretation of Marx. -
Syllabusfinder
PHL342 Minds & Machines Fall 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Brian Cantwell Smith Last edited September 28, 2015 Syllabus Through human history, people have used machine metaphors to understand the mind: clockworks in the 17th century, hydraulic and electro-magnetic systems in Freud’s time, etc. Some might view the computer metaphor for mind in a similar light. But as Haugeland points out, the computer is different. Computers are taken to be a special kind of machine—to embody a unique, profound insights about the relation of mechanism to such distinctively human properties as meaning, representation, and interpretation. The contemporary pro- spect of building a thinking machine is thus serious in a way that it never was before. The idea that the mind is computer—or at least a kind of computer—is known as the computational theory of mind (CTOM). It served as a foundational assumption underlying the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive science in the 1960s and 1970s. In recent decades, the computational theory of mind has come under strenuous critique, but the broader idea that the mind is a machine is still widely believed. Moreover, several of the founding assumptions and insights of the CTOM project remain in place, even in the face of contempo- rary critiques. And AI proceeds apace. In this course, we will look at prospects for mental machines by considering the nature of mind, the na- ture of machines (especially computers), the foundations of the computational theory of mind, and some more recently proposed architectural alternatives. We will focus on two broad themes: (i) causal issues, having to do with mechanism, modularity, architecture, embodiment, neuroscience, dynamics, networks, etc.; and (ii) semantical issues, including meaning, content, reference, semantics, language, representation, and information. -
Chapter Ten of Consciousness Explained Doesn't Have Much of A
Chapter Ten of Consciousness Explained doesn’t have much of a unifying theme, unlike many of the others. It is primarily concerned with more stage setting for Dennett’s attack on qualia and traditional ways of understanding the mind. Consequently, the ideas from section to section tend to be disjointed and do not always flow from one to another. I see this chapter as a bit of minor house cleaning before the main assault. 1: Rotating Images in the Mind’s Eye We can manipulate mental images, and those of us who are good at it can exploit the salient features of said images and put them to good, sometimes surprising use. One fantastic example comes from Richard Feynmann’s Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynmann!, and this passage (from pp. 85 – 86), quoted in Consciousness Explained, where Feynmann describes how he used mental images to analyze arcane theorems of topology, a subject he was not formally trained in: I had a scheme, which I still use today when somebody is explaining something that I’m trying to understand: I keep making up examples. For instance, the mathematicians would come in with a terrific theorem, and they’re all excited. As they’re telling me the conditions of the theorem, I construct something which fits all the conditions. You know, you have a set (one ball) – disjoint (two balls). Then the balls turn colors, grow hairs, or whatever, in my head as they put more conditions on. Finally they state the theorem, which is some dumb thing about the ball which isn’t true for my hairy green ball thing, so I say, “False!” If it’s true, they get all excited, and I let them go on for a while. -
2007 NEWSLETTER Tallahassee, FL
Florida Philosophical Association FPA 53rd Annual Meeting Florida State University 2007 NEWSLETTER Tallahassee, FL NEWS FROM A BOUT FPA MEMBERS THE FPA H ISTORYAND Calls for Papers 2-3 M ISSION http://www.phil.ufl.edu/fpa/ The FPA was founded in 2007 Officers Conference and Lecture 4 1955. With a membership of approximately 300, the David McNaughton (FSU), President FPA is one of the largest Ronald Hall (Stetson), Vice President and most active regional Sally Ferguson (UWF), Secretary/Treasurer Members’ News 5-11 philosophy organizations in the United States. Charlotte Pressler (SFCC), Member-at-Large The mission of the FPA is to promote philosophy in Florida by facilitating the EDITORS exchange of ideas among T HE F LORIDA Nancy A. Stanlick those engaged in this field P HILOSOPHICAL Dept. of Philosophy of inquiry, by encouraging R EVIEW FPA D UES : investigation, by fostering U. of Central Florida Michael Strawser the educational function of is the official journal of the Dept. of Philosophy philosophy, and by improv- Florida Philosophical Asso- ing the academic status of ciation. This peer-reviewed U. of Central Florida $ 1 5 ANNUALLY philosophy. To this end electronic journal features FORFULL there is an Annual Confer- selected papers from an- ence at which a variety of Additional information and MEMBERS nual FPA conferences, as submission guidelines can . professional activities are well as special issues. It is sponsored. The Confer- be found at the FPR web- published by the Depart- site: ence is held in November ment of Philosophy of the <http://www.cah.ucf.edu/ and is located at a Florida University of Central Flor- philosophy/fpr/>.