End of 2007 comment

More a formality than a contentity this blog post, with it being the end of year but without me feeling in much of a review mood. Think one of my 2008 tasks will be to read through these posts, a self-indulgent activity for which Andy Thompson and me coined the word "nurnation" and it's verb form "to nurnate" (i.e. to read through something you wrote yourself). Thanks to all you millions of readers and thanks to blogspot for helping me see more clearly now via postings.

Commentous moment, momentous comment

Thanks O. So in 2007 I do at least get a comment (the previous one was a test one I did, so it doesn't count). Hurray for me, and you. Now I need to find your email details, since you are not on Facebook.

Or should I comment on your comment, that's probably more sensible... done.

Read an excellent book on the evolution of cognition, "How Homo became Sapiens" by Peter Gärdenfors - who is a genius. Such difficult material, presented so well.

Bechtel's book on cell biology is an excellent approach to the philosophy of science, emphasising the importance of, well, mechanisms and diagrams in scientific explanation.

Customer review of Haikonen's book on Robot Brains can be found here:
[Click here for book details and review] - I sent a more detailed and technical review to the author, he seemed happy with it so everyone's happy then, which is nice.

No rest for the nerd oh well

Been a bit quiet on the spacecog front lately - i blame facebook, moving to london, and British Telecom. Now then, back on message...

Bechtel and Abrahamsen's "Connectionism and the Mind" manages to consider connectionism both historically/up-to-the-present (place in cognitive science etc), and philosophically. Also the widest ranging discussion of connectionism i've read. Excellent.

Now working through Haikonen's "Robot Brains". Not that he is a robot or anything. Maybe a biobot, like the rest of us. Anyway I like this book - a synthetic approach to machine cognition; lots of clear diagrams and explanations of his associative mechanisms; considers many aspects of cognition; and has some sense of the philosophical issues that surround his chosen subject. More detail, and more interesting focus overall than in his 2003 book (<-which is maybe more suitable for Humanities faculty undergraduates reading around a new subject).

"Spatial Cognition II" (Freksa et al)

Very brief, somewhat impressionistic remarks on these papers posted to Google Docs, see link in sidebar.

Overall - some good papers to refer back to, some off message for me. 80 euros a bit steep for what I got, but never mind.

Mike Rinck's paper: "Spatial Situation Models" 2005

in Shah & Miyake: "The Cambridge Handbook of Visuospatial Thinking". Excellent article. Emphasises the spatially cognitive aspect of language-comprehension, and the exploratory, fragmentary, active, goal-directed nature of imagining spatial situations from descriptions.

General remarks on cognitive psychology... Based on the various articles, the psychological level of explanation is directed at around the level of "behaviour attractors" in thinking. This is a useful level, even though I get the impression that these researchers find the phenomenology of thought as confusing as I do. Some researchers seem addicted to the "mental images as pictures" model, but not all, e.g. Tversky, and Rinck, who proposes associative mechanisms in spatial situation model construction.

Spatial cognition and the psychological perspectives

Taking a bit of time to adjust to this psychology style of thinking about space (Shah & Miyake's book). Had to skip a few chapters (bit lazy there, motivation a bit elsewhere, must be london calling and the footie starting up again), and even the good ones need a bit of wood-chewing (Barbara Tversky article excellent, Newcombe & Learmonth good).

Interesting this continuing robots-n-philosophy dialogue with Haikonen. Mirrors, he's been doing a smoke and mirrors game for the AAAI symposium. This time I think an email will do, only a cupla points to raise there and anyway need to collect my writing strength a bit for the ol' "to-be-started".

Thompson on egocentric and allocentric space

see p.391 - emphasises the need to recognise others as having egocentric spaces in order to conceive of oneself as inhabiting an intersubjective space.

Review of Haikonen's article completed and sent, well done me. let's see what he thinks about it.