Archive for the ‘Cognitive Science’ Category
Sunday, May 31st, 2026
It is often asked why we should read; more specifically, why we should read the classics or ‘fine literature,’ by which is meant generally poetry, plays, and prose narratives of various kinds – these days especially, ‘serious’ novels. The question is motivated by the fact that reading this literature is ...
Posted in Art, Cognitive Science, Philosophy | No Comments »
Thursday, May 28th, 2026
1. Are there any truths that are just inaccessible to the human mind – that just could not be thought by the human mind?
I’m not wondering about truths that are incomprehensible because of some gross physical limit, like the names of every person on Earth (or choose your own ...
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Sunday, May 24th, 2026
One of my criteria for attributing understanding to a system is that the internal states of the system must be capable of deriving or corresponding to a partial model of that which they understand (to the degree that it is understood anyway.) LLMs are simply incapable of passing such a ...
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Sunday, May 24th, 2026
There was recent kerfuffle online when a blogger posted an image of a real Monet and said that he had generated it using AI.
Could his readers tell him, he asked, why it was inferior to this other image that was of a real Monet?
Of course, his replies were filled with ...
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Monday, May 8th, 2017
Colin McGinn had a comment on the human tendency to irrationality, partly wondering why people are so irrational given that "human irrationality can seem the oddest and least adaptive trait of the species," and accepting that "we need to know what causes irrationality and what we can do to fix ...
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Sunday, May 7th, 2017
There’s been some discussion on other sites about whether we should regret the loss of small languages, and if so, why. Many of the usual points have been made about how change is not something that should be seen as bad just in itself, and we can’t expect to preserve ...
Posted in Cognitive Science, Language | No Comments »
Sunday, December 19th, 2010
This drawing of the octopus's brain - or the part of it that isn't contained in the arms themselves - is from Mike Lisieski's Cephalove site. The octopus is a creature I often use as an example of something that is apparently quite intelligent and yet very different from ourselves. ...
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