Archive for February 2008
Intuition and Philosophical Methodology
Quick plug for my paper on intuition, which was just published in an interesting looking issue of Axiomathes. (here)
Astract: Intuition serves a variety of roles in contemporary philosophy. This paper provides a historical discussion of the revival of intuition in the 1970s, untangling some of the ways that intuition has been used and offering some suggestions concerning its proper place in philosophical investigation. Contrary to some interpretations of the results of experimental philosophy, it is argued that generalized skepticism with respect to intuition is unwarranted. Intuition can continue to play an important role as part of a methodologically conservative stance towards philosophical investigation. I argue that methodological conservatism should be sharply distinguished from the process of evaluating individual propositions. Nevertheless, intuition is not always a reliable guide to truth and experimental philosophy can serve a vital ameliorative role in determining the scope and limits of our intuitive competence with respect to various areas of inquiry.
If you don’t have access to Springer journals, I have a draft of the paper here
Claytronics
Seth Goldstein at Carnegie Mellon works on the practical side of the idea of progammable matter or what he’s calling claytronics. I like how simple and homemade it all looks in the videos. There are some nice videos of his ‘catoms’ in action here.
Pretty cool applications are easy to imagine. Here’s the story from Computerworld which sketches the promise and peril of shape-shifting robot swarms in the living room. There’s an eerie corporate-style video here.
Tons of material here for philosophers.
