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  • Aug 21, 11

    Review of Zombies and Consciousness (Robert Kirk, 2005)

    www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_zombies.html

    • Zombies and Consciousness has two aims. First, Kirk hopes to show that the notion of a zombie – a person of flesh and blood but without the inner light of experience – lacks logical conceivability; it is incoherent and thus cannot be used as grounds for proposing a ‘Hard Problem’ of consciousness. 

        

      Second, he wants to go the next step and show that ordinary physicalism can completely account for consciousness. He identifies a set of psychological functions, each of which is plausibly physical in its causation and, when bundled together, should result in a conscious being with no further (mental or otherwise non-physical) aspects left dangling. Consciousness would be just the sum of these material activities and nothing more.

  • Aug 21, 11

    Real-time data mining unmasks the power of imitation, kith and charisma in our face-to-face social networks

    www.americanscientist.org/...to-signal-is-human human brain biology signal

    • Social psychologists have long observed that humans have a reliable ability to “read” each other. Now evidence is growing that we accomplish this through social signaling, an ancient system of communication that depends on non-verbal communication rather than speech.

  • Aug 21, 11

    Coruzzi's NYU team and collaborator Hon-Ming Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong report their findings in the November 12th issue of Nature in a scientific correspondence entitled "Glutamate receptor genes in plants." For a copy of the article, contact Lauren Funkhouser at Nature at (202) 737-2355.

    www.banchanida.com/...plantbrain.html human brain biology

    • This would contradict the most widely held hypothesis, that psychoactive substances made by plants are primarily defense mechanisms against herbivory. Coruzzi argues that the primary function of these compounds in plants may be to regulate signal transduction and that their role as a plant defense against herbivory is a secondary function that evolved in some plant species under selective pressure.

  • Aug 21, 11

    By Lee Cronk
    Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, lcronk@anthropology.rutgers.edu

    ssi.sagepub.com/...603.abstract

    • Animal signaling theory has recently become popular among anthropologists as a way to study human communication.  One aspect of animal signaling theory, often known as costly signaling or handicap theory, has been used particularly  often. This article makes four points regarding these developments: (1) signaling theory is broader than   existing studies may make it seem; (2) costly signaling theory has roots in the social as well as the biological  sciences; (3) not all honest signals are costly and not all costs borne by signalers serve to ensure honesty;  and (4) hard-to-fake signals are favored when the interests of broad categories of signalers and   receivers conflict but the interests of individual signalers and receivers converge.

  • Aug 21, 11

    A cue is any quality that can be perceived and interpreted for contextualizing. An unintentional cue, or evidence, is a quality that is interpreted without the intention of interpretation from the sender. An intentional cue, or signal, is a quality that is interpreted with the intention of interpretation from the sender.

    web.mit.edu/...Week01.pdf

  • Aug 15, 11

    Jo˜ao Queiroz and Charbel Ni˜no El-Hani, Received 5 January 2006; accepted in revised form 11 April 2006

    Any description of the emergence and evolution of different types of meaning processes (semiosis, sensu C.S.Peirce) in living systems must be supported by a theoretical framework which makes it possible to understand the nature and dynamics of such processes. Here we propose
    that the emergence of semiosis of different kinds can be understood as resulting from fundamental interactions in a triadically-organized hierarchical process.

    www.cspeirce.com/...meaning.pdf semiotics evolution language

  • Aug 14, 11

    Time really, really, really wants to know if animals can think: so much that it's done three separate cover stories on the issue.

    www.huffingtonpost.com/...zine-runs-same-a_n_672498.html animal intelligence communication

    • Time really, really, really wants to know if animals can think: so much that it's done three separate cover stories on the issue.
    • Time Magazine Runs Same Animal Story In 1993, 1999 And 2010

  • Aug 13, 11

    "Why do so many different species of animals all use signals that are inherently expensive, in a wide range of different signalling contexts? Why not simply "whisper" the message to the intended receiver, rather than producing an elaborate and costly display? And why do these expensive signals seem to be so convincing to the intended signal receivers?"

    octavia.zoology.washington.edu/...honest_intro_02.html social theory introduction

  • Aug 13, 11

    Cues need not be intentional and the information gleaned from a cue may not be beneficial to person or animal producing the cue. The smell of CO2 that guides a mosquito to you is a cue to the insect - you did not choose to provide it with this information and indeed would preferred not to have done so. This is an unintentional cue; it is not beneficial to the producer of the cue. Signals are thus a subset of cues; allsignals are cues - they can be used as a guide to future action - but not all cues are signals.

    smg.media.mit.edu/...NotesOnSignaling.pdf

  • Aug 11, 11

    By Roland Pease

    www.bbc.co.uk/...science-environment-14492948 animal code

    • Just 20 amino acids are used in natural living organisms, assembled in different combinations to make the tens of thousands of different proteins needed to sustain life.
    • But Sebastian Greiss and Jason Chin have re-engineered the nematode worm's gene-reading machinery to include a 21st amino acid, not found in nature.

    1 more annotation...

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