Tag Archives: Mind

Interconnections between memory, time and place

Karey Kessler creates map-paintings that contain ideas about physical, spiritual, internal, and temporal spaces.

“My maps tell the story of an ever changing environment, impermanence, and the immensity of time. They tell stories about the interconnected ecosystems of the world that don’t end where one country’s borders end and another’s begins: how both air and water (and therefore pollution), defy borders. The stories include deep time (before humans were on earth) and the eternal things that will remain once we’re gone.”

Can machines be self-aware? New research explains how this could happen

Michael Timothy Bennett is a PhD Student, School of Computing, Australian National University
“After obtaining a masters from London Business School, I worked for 7 years in the technology sector in the UK, Italy, US and India. After founding a successful machine learning consultancy in London, I returned home to Australia to undertake research focused on artificial intelligence, studying at the ANU.”

Futurists predict a point where humans and machines become one. But will we see it coming?

John Kendall Hawkins is a Philosopher at the University of New England.
“I am an American ex-pat poet and freelance journalist and lifelong student currently residing in Oceania. I’m a philosopher — panpsychism, so residing, when you think about it, everywhere.”
He is a former reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times, and a former columnist for the Prague Post. His poetry has won multiple awards, including the Academy of Ameican Poets prize in 1984 and the Deakin Literary Award in 1998.

Sandy Boucher is a Lecturer in the Philosophy of Science at the University of New England, NSW Australia.
“My research interests are mainly in the philosophy of biology (especially functions and teleology, the units of selection, species, natural kinds, macroevolution and paleobiology) and general philosophy of science (especially the scientific realism debate), but I also work on issues in metaphilosophy and epistemology. Current research projects include work on pragmatism in the scientific realism debate; arguments for realism about the units of selection; the role of values in science; and naturalised metaphysics.”

How uploading our minds to a computer might become possible

Angela Thornton is a PhD Candidate, University of Nottingham
“For my PhD thesis I have been exploring public awareness and attitudes to mind uploading. Up until 2018 I was an industry market researcher specialising in healthcare although I also have business to business and consumer experience. I have over 30 years’ experience and have held senior roles at several agencies including Ipsos MORI and Research International (South Africa) where I was the Qualitative Director on the Unilever account. In 2014 I set up my own consultancy ACT Research Ltd and this gave me the opportunity to fulfil a long-held ambition to gain a post graduate qualification as a mature student. I achieved a Distinction in my MSc from the University of Nottingham and was subsequently accepted onto the Horizon Centre’s Doctoral Training Programme which focuses on the digital economy and digital innovation.

Les Murray said his autism shaped his poetry – his late poems offer insights into his creative process

Amanda Tink is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University’s Writing and Society Research Centre, researching Australian disabled authors. Her chapter, “‘If You’re Different Are You the Same?’: The Nazi Genocide of Disabled People and Les Murray’s Fredy Neptune”, in Genocide Perspectives VI, was shortlisted for the nonfiction category of the 2021 Woollahra Digital Literary Award. With Dr Jessica White, she recently co-edited a special issue of Australian Literary Studies titled “Writing Disability in Australia”.

Suckers for learning: why octopuses are so intelligent

Lisa Poncet is Doctorante en neuroéthologie, Université de Caen Normandie.
“Après un master en écologie, éthologie et écophysiologie, où j’ai travaillé sur le comportement d’animaux très variés (chiens, crapauds accoucheurs, chouettes effraies, corbeaux freux …), j’ai débuté un doctorat en neuroéthologie. Depuis 2 ans, j’étudie des animaux très particuliers : les seiches communes et les poulpes communs. Je cherche à mieux comprendre leur mémoire et leur capacité à planifier le futur, et à améliorer nos connaissances sur l’origine et l’évolution de ces facultés.”

Observation Station

Heather Barnett discusses Observation Station, a series of interspecies interventions designed to examine how and why we look at animals, and which animals we choose to observe. The project is part of the Machine Wilderness residency programme in Amsterdam, centred on public fieldwork developing methodologies and prototypes of ‘wilderness machines’ that engage with local environmental complexity.

If animals could speak, would we understand them?

Jennifer Ann McDonell is Associate Professor, University of New England.
“The ‘NonHuman turn’ in the Humanities, which emerged in the final decades of the twentieth century, addresses some the most urgent and difficult conceptual issues in Humanities scholarship: the politics and material practices of species difference, the functions of animals in nature/cultures, and the fragile status of the ‘human’ in an era of accelerated environmental crisis. Supported by both textual analysis and archival work, my research in this area aims to identify and analyse intersections between species and discourses of gender, class, race, ethnicity in Victorian literature and culture.”

On a Multispecies Studio

Julie Andreyev is an artist-activist, researcher and educator in Vancouver, located on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish people, including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations, as well as the unceded traditional territories of nonhuman animals and plantlife. Her multispecies studio practice, called Animal Lover, explores more-than-human creativity and ways of knowing.