May Flashcards
Things learned in May
Dennett best example of memes
Words
No myth of creation or design. Classified already into family trees. Change and adapt and succeed or fail.
Dennett best definition of a meme
A way.
A way of thinking
A way of wearing a hat
A way of designing a bridge
Dennett: humans are not simply learners…
… they are also persuadable. Theyrespond to reasons that are represented to them.
Ant colony structure
Ants perform particular roles but these roles are not fixed. The ants are not specialists. They display collective intelligence and respond to gluts of food by reallocating guards to workers, threats by reallocating workers to soldiers. Roles can change by age as well as economic need. In hundreds of species the ants are homogeneous with no physical distinctions at all.
Ant intelligence expert
Deborah Gordon
Major system:
Cthulu
715
Major system:
Avicenna
802
Major system:
chum
63
Major system:
bored
941
Jemma birthday
22/11
Nun toad
Isla birthday
2/11/2018
Indict Isla
Olly birthday
22/5/2017
Ninny Olly
Edinburgh Anniversary
15/4
Dollar!
Kenya Anniversary
11/6
Add dosh
Keri birthday
6/4
Chore
Tracy Birthday
21/4
Indoor
Julian Birthday
1/12
Die dino
Dennett tentative proposal for origin of language
Chomsky’s recent revision to his Language Activation Device (LAD), MERGE. Merge is the capacity to formulate recursive linguistic conceptual relationships by associating two concepts using just the label of one of them.
Merge is a candidate for a very simple adaptation that enabled later complex language use.
Lee Siegel 1991 “Real magic…”
Real magic, in other words, refers to magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.
Dennett uses as an analogy for consciousness and neuroscience
Dennett “the hard question”
“and then what?”
If a theorist finds a way to explain how a representation makes it into phenomenal consciousness, we must ask why? What is it doing there? Dennett’s claim is that there is never a satisfactory answer, that all the work has already been done by the subpersonal processes.
Dennett free will is just as real as…
… dollars, centres of gravity etc. we cannot do without them and we cannot do without free will.
Frances Arnold
Biochemist. 2018 Nobel prize chemistry. Novel protein evolution.
Biochemist. 2018 Nobel prize for Chemistry. Novel protein Evolution.
Frances Arnold
Thomas Landauer
Pioneering development of “latent semantic analysis”.
A professor sets an essay question on an exam, and writes an A+ answer to the question, which is then given to both the computer program and a human teaching assistant as an example of what a good essay on the topic should be. (The A+ answer is not shown to the examination takers, of course.) Then the program and the teaching assistant grade all the student answers, and the program’s grades are in closer agreement to the professor’s judgments than the grades submitted by the teaching assistant, who is presumably a budding expert in the field.
Latent semantic analysis Pioneer
Thomas Landauer
Seleucid empire dates and context
311BC emerged after death of Alexander the great. Introduced a universal standard for time - counting years.
Trial of Socrates order of dialogues
Meno Euthyphro Apology Crito Phaedo
The science of storytelling author date
Will Storr 2019
The brain is not a logic…
The brain is not a logic processor, it is a story processor.
Attributed to Jonathan Haidt by Will Storr
Monomyth theorist
Joseph Campbell
Number of explanation seeking questions asked between age 2 and 5
40,000
The psychology of curiosity author year main points
Loewenstein 1994
Curiosity induced by
1 posing question or problem
2 giving a sequence with an anticipated but unknown resolution
3 violation of expectations triggers a search for explanation
4 knowing that others possess some information
Elements of personality from will Storr science of storytelling
Neuroticism
Openness
Extraversion
Conscientiousness
Culture differences east and west
Individual hero v collective harmony
Greek situation mountainous. Unsuitable for communal farmers. Individuals who could hustle were successful.
China and India have paddy cultures of harmonious cooperation leading to success.
Prof Sarah Humble experiment
Present people in MRI evidence that contradicts their political beliefs. Fight or flight neural response recorded. Like coming across a bear in the woods.
Split brain researcher
Michael Gazzaniga
Michael Gazzaniga findings
Split brain patient. Left hem told to walk. Right hem confabulated reason “I want a coke”
Left hem shown pictures of burning people. Right hem “I don’t know why but I am scared, I feel jumpy, I don’t like this room, you are making me nervous. “
Difference principle
John Rawls
Inequalities are just insofar as they work to the benefit of the least well off.
3 Objections to Rawls and replies
Incentives (accounted for by difference principle) Meritocratic based on effort (influenced by natural and cultural contingencies) (meritocracy does not measure effort but outcome) Self ownership (rights protected by veil of ignorance)
School experience effects
Research shows that people with a positive high status school experience watch episodes of intense social interaction and attend more closely to the positive interactions, those who were low status at school would attend to negative and unkind behaviour.
Brian Little: average number of personal projects we have going on at once
15
Leibniz main work
Monadology 1714
Curlicue
A pretty curl or twist
“A curlicue of smoke”
A pretty curl or twist
Curlicue
Tao the Ching: The master is…
The master is content to serve as an example and not to impose her will.
Epoché
Suspension of judgement
Phenomenology: ridding experience of any theoretical baggage by attending closely to the phenomena.
Suspension of judgement
Phenomenology - thought rid of presuppositions
Epoché
At the Existentialist Café author date
Sarah Bakewell 2016
Dasein
Heidegger
Being there
Humanness
Das Man
Heidegger
The they as in they say it will be over at Christmas
But we are part of it. Must resist brig swept along by it
