These are in the order of most recent to least recent. They are NOT scientific papers. Rather, they are journal notes, random thoughts, and interesting ideas that I've captured.

I recommend "The Emotion Machine" by Marvin Minsky. I took copious notes as I read it and added my own reflections as I went. They are in the following paper:

Comments on "The Emotion Machine"

I believe that the basis for human self-awareness is the ability to physically sense some of what is going on within our own brain. Many researchers argue against this view and claim that we have no special knowledge about what is going on inside our own heads. I think that is a fundamentally flawed idea and that self-aware software can only arise once we understand that we need to instrument the software's operational state itself so that we can reason about what is going on. Our everyday language reflects our intuitive understanding of an ability to know what is happening in our own brains. This short paper lists the everyday phrases that we use to describe this process:

Consciousness Phrases

This paper was one I started a LONG time ago (1982 to be exact). It was originally created as a very preliminary proposal for my doctoral thesis. It was rejected out of hand by my advisor at the time. I updated the ideas several years ago (2007) and added annotations to the original document to reflect new ideas. In some sense this is still the basis for research that I'm doing.

Catastrophe Theory as a Model of the Control Structure for an Expert System

The following is a short description of my successful search for a cure for my plantar fasciitis.

My Plantar Fasciitis Cure.pdf