Man Without Qualities
L’homme sans qualité
Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
To put an image to the nom de plume see slideshow.
Follow these links for more on the original (and fictional) manwithoutqualities and as the Nowhere man.
Research interests
My research falls at the confluence of cognitive science (dynamical -, embodied -, extended -, distributed -, and situated -, theories of cognition - DEEDS); philosophy (social epistemology, philosophy of social science, social metaphysics, political philosophy) and computing (cognitive modeling, collaborative filtering, swarm intelligence, multi-agent systems). In short, each strand informs my overiding research project which I have generally characterized as sociocognition and derivatively termed social connectionism or stigmergic cognition.
Food for thought
It is often asked why someone whose central interest is in cognitive science, writes on such diverse subject matter as ancient philosophy, philosophy of history, political philosophy, sociology and religion. The answer is simply that these are abiding interests (I have post-graduate degrees in these subjects) and that all these tributaries flow into the same river. The thought of one’s research going into ever decreasing, derivative and infertile circles, depresses me. To paraphrase Hayek:
. . . exclusive concentration on a speciality has a peculiarly baneful effect: it will not merely prevent us from being attractive company or good citizens but may impair our competence in our proper field . . .
Or as Oakeshott put it:
Thinking . . . is not a professional matter;
If it were it would be much less important than I take it to be.
