News

A Lunch BIT from Structuring an Energy Technology Revolution by Charles Weiss and William B. Bonvillian

March 25, 2014

Even among the many who agree that action to halt climate change is a necessity disagree on what strategies to pursue and, crucially, whether those efforts should be undertaken by private industry or the government. The task of Structuring an Energy Revolution, by Charles Weiss and William Bonvillian, is to convince a reader that a coordinated public-private program to stimulate innovation is necessary. Or, as one review put it:

A Lunch BIT from The Illusion of Conscious Will by Daniel M. Wegner

March 24, 2014

The debate of free will versus determinism is probably the oldest philosophical argument. We humans have made great advances in science, but yet we still have not figured out the answer to this conundrum. The Illusion of Conscious Will by Daniel Wegner seeks answers to this age-old puzzle. Wegner argues that our conscious free will originates in our brain, and that what we think is free will is an illusion. Despite this controversial view, Wegner makes the case that even though our conscious will is not real; it has helped formulate our notions of morality.

A Lunch BIT from The Neural Basis of Free Will by Peter Ulric Tse

March 21, 2014

Throughout history, the nature of free will has been a hot topic of examination and debate in both philosophy and the sciences. In his book The Neural Basis of Free Will, Peter Tse examines the unanswered questions of free will from a neuroscience perspective. As opposed to philosophers who reason the problem through logic, Tse proposes that we listen to what neurons have to say. Using recent neurophysiological research, Tse presents what the New York Journal of Books called “a groundbreaking new paradigm about how the mind works.”

A Lunch BIT from Architecture Depends by Jeremy Till

March 20, 2014

Jeremy Till wrote Architecture Depends to defend the thesis that architecture….depends. On a lot of things. On random, contingent events and unstable factors that architects have tried to ignore in the past in an effort to preserve their discipline as a pure, autonomous field that exists in a tower above the (literal) city.

Disaster Robotics

Today we have Dr. Robin Murphy, author of Disaster Robotics, weighing in on the use of robotics in tragic disasters such as the missing Malaysian Airlines jet and Air France Flight AF447.

A Composer’s Guide to Game Music

March 17, 2014

Today Winifred Phillips, author of A Composer’s Guide to Game Music, guest blogs about her new book.

A Lunch BIT from Artificial Love by Paul Shepheard

March 16, 2014

Artificial Love, Paul Shepheard’s highly original book about architecture and machines, was published in 2003 and received much critical acclaim. Liz Bailey provided this wonderful assessment of the book in The Architect’s Journal:

A Lunch BIT from Perplexities of Consciousness by Eric Schwitzgebel

March 15, 2014

​​​​​​​Early in Perplexities of Consciousness, Eric Schwitzgebel asks a wonderful and deceptively simple question: Do you dream in color or black and white? Think about it for a second before you answer. OK, which is it? And how can you be certain? And if you think you’re sure, consider that prior to the advent of color television, most people reported dreaming in black and white. After it became commonplace, well, you can probably guess what happened. Now how sure are you?

Five Minutes with Mark Balaguer

March 14, 2014

Mark Balaguer, author of the newly released book Free Will from the Essential Knowledge series, answers a few questions on this timeless subject.

A Lunch BIT from Borges and Memory by Rodrigo Quian Quiroga

March 13, 2014

Imagine the astonishment felt by neuroscientist Rodrigo Quian Quiroga when he found a fantastically precise interpretation of his research findings in a story written by the great Argentinian fabulist Jorge Luis Borges fifty years earlier. In this BIT, Quian Quiroga explores real-life cases that recall Borges’s fictional “Funes the Memorious,” investigating a man who couldn’t forget, and another who could not form new memories.