mixingmemory
Posts by this author
December 12, 2006
In the paper I discussed the other day, Atran and Norenzayan argue that one of the most important factors in determining whether a religious narrative is successful is how memorable it is. Easily remembered narratives get passed on, while difficult to remember narratives are forgotten. Thus,…
December 11, 2006
Over at A Brood Comb, Tanasije Gjorgoski posts a quote from Hegel's Philosophy of Logic that is one of my favorites. I used to use part of it all the time in discussions with people (mostly scientists) who thought that all metaphysics was nonsense to be avoided at all cost.
The Atomic philosophy…
December 10, 2006
So far, Mixing Memory is not in last place in the voting for "best science blog"! That's saying something, given that this blog is probably the lowest traffic blog on the list by a rather large margin. If you want to vote to insure that Mixing Memory finishes second to last, instead of last, you…
December 10, 2006
Apparently, there's another new brain blog on ScienceBlogs, though I only learned about it because Bora linked to it. So, a warm welcome to Neurontic.
While I'm linking to other SBers, Shelley of Retrospectacle has a nice interview with Irene Pepperberg, the parrot lady. It looks like Dr.…
December 9, 2006
A few days ago, there was an interesting discussion of swear words in the blogosphere (my contribution was a map of Louisiana... don't ask). Like any good cognitive psychologist with obsessive compulsive disorder, upon reading the swear words posts, I thought to myself, "What have I read in the…
December 8, 2006
This was originally posted on the old blog on 1/5/05. I'm reposting it here, with a few editorial ommissions (contextual; references to things from back then that won't make sense here), because of our recent discussion of religion. Hopefully I'll be able to post about some of the empirical work…
December 7, 2006
You can go here to get the links for all the categories, or here to vote for the best science blog. You can vote once a day, apparently. Voting ends December 15.
December 7, 2006
Since it's come up a lot, here's a recent discussion of Anselm's Ontological Argument in the philosophical literature (via OPP).
Millican, P. (2004). The one fatal flaw in Anselm's Aagument. Mind, 113, 437-476.
Anselm's Ontological Argument fails, but not for any of the various reasons commonly…
December 7, 2006
Is it wrong that I find this absolutely hilarious? It may be my son's new favorite song, too.
Someone should pass this on to David Chalmers. That zombie clearly exhibits all the signs of consciousness.
December 7, 2006
I should have posted about this yesterday, but, well, I'm a slacker. One of my favorite blogs, OmniBrain, has moved to ScienceBlogs. Both Stephen and Sandra are great bloggers, and they always manage to have fun with cognitive and brain sciences.
Stephen is a perception researcher, but I try not…
December 6, 2006
One of the more sophisticated theories in embodied cognition is Lawrence Barsalou's perceptual symbol systems theory. It is, in essence, an updated version of the "ideas as images" position of the British empiricists, and the mental imagery theories of the seventies1. The basics of the theory are…
December 5, 2006
It seems that Mixing Memory is a finalist for best science blog in the 2006 Weblog Awards. I'm not sure how they decide on finalists (whoever gets nominated, I guess), but it's cool anyway. Several other ScienceBlogs were nominated as well, including Pharyngula (i.e., the winner), Deltoid, and Good…
December 5, 2006
I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's participated in the discussion in the previous post, and to anyone who adds to that discussion. I may disagree with you, and you with me, and we may even do so pretty vehemently, but I've been impressed with the level of the discussion (a rarity, in the…
December 5, 2006
PZ Myers on religion in general, and not just fundamentalism. I think this will be my last post on the topic for a while (I can hear your cheers), because Dr. Myers has shown the ignorance and bias in the "Churchill" position so well that I don't need to add anything else.
"Nuance"? Sweet jebus,…
December 5, 2006
I posted these long ago on the old blog, but I was reading Studies in Pessimism, and when I came across them, I decided to post them again. The parables are all from the last chapter of the book. At the end is one of his "Psychological Observations," which is from the fifth chapter.
A number of…
December 4, 2006
It seems some people are having trouble wrapping their minds around what it means to be a Neville Chamberlain atheist, while other people are just making up any definition they can to make anyone who's not a hyper-scientistic Dawkinsian look bad. Recall that I think the Chamberlain-Churchill…
December 4, 2006
At some point, terror management theorists are going to attempt to explain everything in the universe with their theory (I suspect we'll see a paper titled "Mortality Salience and the Bose-Einstein Condensate" in the next few years). Since I've already talked about terror management theory work on…
December 3, 2006
Since there's a discussion of profanity out there in the blogosophere, I feel justified in asking the following question:
Is it just me, or does Louisiana look like it's giving the bird to the Caribbean?
Maybe Plaquemines is the Cajun way of saying "va te faire foutre."
Oh, I should connect this…
December 3, 2006
Get out your stop watches. Press start, and then answer this question:
What day of the week was August 17, 1932?
How long did it take you? Oh, the answer is Wednesday, by the way. I cheated, and used a calculator, because I'm not very good at calendrical calculations, but some people, usually of…
December 2, 2006
Let's step into the wayback machine and talk about some research that even the psychologists among us might not be aware of (I certainly wasn't). It seems that at the turn of the 20th century, many psychologists and psychophysicists (including the father of psychophysics, Gustave Fechner) were…
December 1, 2006
One of my near obsessions in cognitive science is the recovered memories debate. Not only has it been one of the most contentious debates in the field over the last 2 decades, but its practical implications are some of the most profound. There are people in jail right now largely as a result of…
November 29, 2006
In a comment at the end of the Religion and Science post, Brandon of Siris mentions Peter King as a source for discussions of Anselm's ontological argument. If you're interested, here's a link to his encyclopedia entry on Anselm, and this paper discusses the logic of the argument in more detail.…
November 29, 2006
Originally posted on the old blog on 3/8/2005, and reposted here out of laziness.
The Importance of Names
What's in a name, for a concept I mean? Cognitive psychologists studying concepts and categorization have, notby and large, treated concept names (often called "category labels") as just…
November 28, 2006
According to many theories of embodied cognition (particularly type 5), perception is designed to facilitate bodily action, and therefore perception and movement are deeply connected. Much of the evidence for this position comes from research on the relationship between attitudes and movements. For…
November 27, 2006
One more short post before we return to your regularly scheduled long-winded cog sci stuff. Greece vs. Germany on the soccer field. Enjoy.
November 27, 2006
I stumbled upon a paper on using blogs in education, with a focus on small colleges, and I thought it might be of interest to some of you. Here's the blog post with a link to the paper.
November 27, 2006
Those of you interested in embodied cognition, and issues of knowledge representation, should find this paper interesting:
Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 9(4), 625-636.
Abstract
The emerging viewpoint of embodied cognition holds that cognitive…
November 27, 2006
I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go.
Once the sin…
November 26, 2006
You've probably all heard about the Beyond Belief series, in which scientists give talks about the conflict between science and religion, as well as the science of religion. I've only watched the cognitive scientists (and Dawkins, for reasons I'll mention below), so far, and that's probably all I'…
November 24, 2006
Originally posted on the old blog on 4/3/05.
Self-Perpetuating Paradigms: How Scientists Deal With Unexpected Results
Previously, I discussed Kevin Dunbar's research on the use of . However, Dunbar is better known in cognitive psychology for his in vivo work on scientific cognition. I'll get to…