Braitenberg’s Vehicles does something indescribably non-verbal. It’s a tiny book that passes through your mind silently, like a ninja, and then any lingering shreds of vitalism you have just sort of explode and blow away on the wind. Every child should have a copy (and robot parts to use it with).
Added some, sorry. Cranes vs. skyhooks is the central metaphor of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea but doesn’t seem to have its own page anywhere; it seems to me akin to EY’s notion of “follow-the-improbability”.
“Figment” is from Consciousness Explained; it’s sort of the notion of a volume of imagined colour. Dennett used it in a discussion of e.g. the retinal blind spot, to make the distinction between the brain’s actively “filling in” a missing signal (which he takes to be a confused reification) versus the brain simply not caring about the missing signal.
Various bits from Dennett: cranes versus skyhooks, the Cartesian Theatre, ‘figment’, the intentional stance, the notion of an intuition pump.
Braitenberg’s Vehicles does something indescribably non-verbal. It’s a tiny book that passes through your mind silently, like a ninja, and then any lingering shreds of vitalism you have just sort of explode and blow away on the wind. Every child should have a copy (and robot parts to use it with).
Seconding Braitenberg’s Vehicles (if you can’t get the book, see the links here).
I’ll third it. http://web.mit.edu/~luke_h/www/BraitenbergVehicles.pdf
There is also a variety of demos/software, under Google:”braitenberg vehicles simulation” not sure which one is worth trying.
Dennett—Competence without Comprehension. The magic that is real is not real magic.
Links?
Added some, sorry. Cranes vs. skyhooks is the central metaphor of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea but doesn’t seem to have its own page anywhere; it seems to me akin to EY’s notion of “follow-the-improbability”.
“Figment” is from Consciousness Explained; it’s sort of the notion of a volume of imagined colour. Dennett used it in a discussion of e.g. the retinal blind spot, to make the distinction between the brain’s actively “filling in” a missing signal (which he takes to be a confused reification) versus the brain simply not caring about the missing signal.