Last month, Professor Aaron Sloman was awarded the 2020 K. Jon Barwise Prize which recognizes “significant and sustained contributions to areas relevant to philosophy and computing by an APA member. The prize will serve to credit those within our profession for their life long efforts in this field.”
Continue reading Homage to Aaron Sloman, Winner of the 2020 APA K. Jon Barwise Prize
Key idea. Cognitive scientists have embraced Hume, but to understand the mind, they must also take a Kantian perspective.
Continue reading Humean vs. Kantian Approaches to Kantian Mechanisms (Human Mind)
A quick note about the speed and some characteristics of mental change in adults, using an example from Ron Burnett. Accommodation can happen quickly when the right conditions are in place.[1] Accommodation is the crown jewels of mental development, including many important forms of learning and knowledge building. It is what happens to your mind as it grasps a new concept, theory or set of concepts and can now see the world in a new way, in its terms. In Cognitive Productivity, I likened this to acquiring a new perceptual modality.
Most previous thinkers on the subject emphasized the purely “cognitive” aspects of accommodation. What strikes me however are the affective dimensions of many forms of accommodation. I.e., in accommodation one doesn’t simply perceive and think differently, but one’s value system changes. Information is now pertinent that didn’t use to be pertinent. Information gets internally connected in a valenced fashion in one’s mind/brain. One of my most important theoretical and practical concerns is to understand accommodation.
CogZest’s mission is “To help you use knowledge to become more effective.” We study, develop and celebrate expertise. I like working with great minds. (Who wouldn’t?) It improves my understanding of expertise and improves the quality of my work.
So, it’s a pleasure to reflect on the IT and web development services Jeff Rivett has provided to CogSci Apps Corp. and CogZest.
Continue reading Gratitude for an Excellent Web Developer/IT Service Provider
At first, I assumed the invitation from Canada 300 was spam. It said I had been nominated as one of only 25 community leaders in Vancouver to participate in an in-depth, national conversation on the future of Canada. But then I received an email confirming it was legitimate. And the National Post published an article by Tamara Sestanj on it. So, intrigued (as I remain), I reviewed the documentation.
Through an innovative use of arts and technology, we want to capture the promise of what Canada will be seven generations from now.
CogZest is for and about beautiful, passionate minds. So, it’s natural for me to respond to The Imitation Game.
The film received mixed reviews. Many of those knowledgeable about Turing and the Enigma project were disappointed by the film’s lack of fidelity, particularly given how fascinating these subjects are in reality. I did not expect to see a documentary, nor something outside Hollywood’s style, so I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve used the divertissement’s themes as a cognitive springboard rather than a trampoline to which I frequently return for inspiration, let alone for factual information.
It being Valentine’s day (and given that I am nursing an R&D project dealing with romantic love), it seems appropriate to launch into the theme of intellectual loneliness, companionship and romantic love, to which The Imitation Game alluded.
Continue reading Lovers, Intellectual Loneliness, and an Enigma
This epistolary essay was written in 2014 (with some later updates) as a response to Lam Wong’s 21 Elements: Relation, Perception and Meaning painting exhibition of Sept. 2014 in New Westminster. I blogged about the exhibition prior to writing this essay.
In 2014, Lam Wong’s 21 Elements: Relation, Perception and Meaning book was published. That book contains photos of all the paintings in his exhibition. A chapter of 21 Elements, written by Lam, which includes pictures of several of the paintings from his book, are available in this PDF.
Photos of the paintings from 21 Elements are available on Lam’s website.
A version of the essay below appears in the second edition of 21 Elements, published in 2022. That’s a limited edition print.
A version of the essay below, interleaved with photos of the paintings, will appear in Discontinuities: Love, Art, Mind. The letter reflects many of the themes of Discontinuities, including, of course, affective epistolary communication.
Shadows of shadows passing. It is now 1831, and as always I am absorbed with a delicate thought. It is how poetry has indefinite sensations, to which end music is an essential. Since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception, music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry. Music without the idea is simply music. Without music or an intriguing idea, colour becomes pallor, man becomes carcass, home becomes catacomb, and the dead are but for a moment motionless. Edgar Allan Poe
Dear ______,
I had the pleasure of attending, on several occasions, Lam Wong’s 21 Elements: Relation, Perception and Meaning exhibition and of discussing his art with him. As a result, I am moved to share my reflections with you.
I have uploaded a timeless address given by Claude Lamontagne, Professor of Psychology, on the occasion of him receiving the 2001 University of Ottawa Teaching Award.
I’ve uploaded this address this evening in order to share the gem, and so that I can link to it in an essay I am writing on Lam Wong’s recent 21 Elements exhibition of paintings on “Relation, Perception and Meaning”. (The essay will be in the next edition of Wong’s book, 21 Elements.) It is fitting that Lamontagne’s paper should itself be so beautifully artistic! Professor of Psychology, on the occasion of him receiving the 2001 University of Ottawa Teaching Award.
Lamontagne’s address is “University Teaching: A critical Rationalist’s Reflexions”.
If you love visual art and are around Metro-Vancouver this month, then consider attending the exhibition of Lam Wong’s paintings on “Relation, perception and meaning”. It runs from Sept 2 to Sept 27 at the Arts Council Gallery of New Westminster in Queen’s Park (closed Mondays).
You can tell from the title of this exhibition that Lam Wong’s interests overlap with those of cognitive scientists.
In 1996, acclaimed CBC host Peter Gzowski interviewed Alice Munro, well before she won a Nobel prize in literature. Here are a few knowledge gems from Rewind with Michael Enright, today’s republication of this fabulous interview: