Happy New Year
Category: Miscellaneous
Happy New Year, wherever you are....
Posted by Chris at 8:15 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Mixing Memory
An entrée of Cognitive Science with an occasional side of whatever the hell else I want to talk about.
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Cognitive stuff from a cognitive person. If you've got any requests, drop me an email. If it takes me a while to get to it, drop me another one.
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April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
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The Mixing Memory Reading Group is a place for experts and non-experts alike to discuss books and papers in cognitive science.
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December 31, 2006
Beyond Belief (Slight Reprise)
Category: Philosophy
In lieu of an effortful post on cognitive science while I'm relaxing for the holidays, I thought I'd say a few things about religion and Dawkins again. If you hang around ScienceBlogs, you've probably noticed the spat between the two...
Posted by Chris at 9:48 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 21, 2006
Cognitive Science of Humor
Category: Cognitive Psychology
I'm traveling today, so I'm posting something I wrote along time ago instead of offering anything new. This one's from the blogs early days, so I really hadn't gotten used to this blogging thing when I wrote it. Also, in...
Posted by Chris at 9:51 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 20, 2006
Piling On
Category: Miscellaneous
More than a week ago, Razib wrote an unfortunate little post in which he displayed all sorts of poor judgment. Since it's short, I'm going to quote the entire post here, including his updates. The virginity thread generated a lot...
Posted by Chris at 8:56 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Money as a Drug
Category: Cognitive Psychology
I'm going to be traveling tomorrow, so I'm spending today getting ready. Instead of a long post about research, I thought I'd link you to a paper Stephen E. G. Lea by in press at Behavioral and Brain Sciences. For...
Posted by Chris at 9:07 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 19, 2006
I'll Be Able To Remember It If I Lie Down: Body Posture and Memory
Category: Cognitive Psychology
One of the more sophisticated theories in embodied cognition is Lawrence Barsalou's perceptual symbol systems theory (which I've talked about before, here). Starting from the premise that cognition is for action, it argues that concepts are represented in the same...
Posted by Chris at 10:00 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 18, 2006
Music In the Mind: Is Pitch Represented On a Mental Line?
Category: Cognitive Psychology
A friend of mine and I were having a conversation today, and one of us (I don't remember who) brought up a poster that we'd seen at a conference a few years ago. Later, I wondered what had become of...
Posted by Chris at 9:16 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 16, 2006
Best Science Blog
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Congratulations to Pharyngula, winner of the 2006 Weblog Award for Best Science Blog. Congratulations to Bad Astronomy Blog for giving PZ a run for his money, too. I finished last, but given the fact that my traffic is much, much...
Posted by Chris at 11:03 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Letters from Nietzsche
Category: Philosophy
OK, the last two posts with quotes from philosophers were at least remotely relevant to recent discussions on this blog. These quotes will be completely irrelevant, but they've stuck with me since I first read them at least a decade...
Posted by Chris at 6:14 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Memory Without Remembering... For 17 Years
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Speaking of studies that make you go "wow," I recently read a very recent one that really surprised me, and thought I'd describe it here. Memory researchers are famous for coming up with different types of memory, sparking years of...
Posted by Chris at 9:31 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 14, 2006
Coolest... Experiment... Ever
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Yesterday, Steve of OmniBrain asked, "What is the coolest psychology experiment ever?" Feel free to provide your own answer in comments there and/or here. As for me, there are some that I think are really cool for theoretical reasons, but...
Posted by Chris at 9:09 AM • 26 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 13, 2006
Ortega y Gasset On Science
Category: Philosophy
Here are two pretty lengthy passages from two Ortega y Gasset essays, both published in History as a System (one of my favorite books), and translated by Helene Weyl. I'm posting them because I think they're relevant to our recent...
Posted by Chris at 7:53 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Terrorism and the Punishment of Unrelated Crimes
Category: Social Cognition
Humans are strange animals. We have such a deep need for social order that, when that order is threatened, we'll do irrelevant things in an effort to preserve it. For example, when people are told that the conviction rate for...
Posted by Chris at 8:54 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 12, 2006
Religion and Memory
Category: Cognitive Psychology
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...
Posted by Chris at 9:44 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 11, 2006
A Little Hegel
Category: Cognitive Psychology
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...
Posted by Chris at 10:58 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 10, 2006
Not Last!
Category: Miscellaneous
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...
Posted by Chris at 5:07 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Welcome, Neurontic! Oh, and Some Other Stuff
Category: Miscellaneous
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...
Posted by Chris at 8:18 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 9, 2006
If You Want Someone To Remember What You Said, Cuss
Category: Cognitive Psychology
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...
Posted by Chris at 9:18 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 8, 2006
A Comprehensive Theory of Religious Cognition
Category: Cognitive Psychology
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...
Posted by Chris at 8:51 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 7, 2006
2006 Weblog Awards Voting
Category: Miscellaneous
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....
Posted by Chris at 8:33 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Contemporary Discussions of the Ontological Argument
Category: Philosophy
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...
Posted by Chris at 6:57 PM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Re: Your Brains
Category: Miscellaneous
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....
Posted by Chris at 4:59 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Welcome, OmniBrain!
Category: Blogs and Blogging
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...
Posted by Chris at 8:02 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 6, 2006
Embodied Language and Expertise
Category: Cognitive Psychology
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...
Posted by Chris at 9:30 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
They Like Me, They Really Like Me!
Category: Blogs and Blogging
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...
Posted by Chris at 2:13 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 5, 2006
Thanks for the Discussion
Category: Miscellaneous
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...
Posted by Chris at 7:52 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
This Is Exactly What I'm Talking About
Category: Miscellaneous
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...
Posted by Chris at 12:57 PM • 108 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Schopenhauer's Parables
Category: Philosophy
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...
Posted by Chris at 9:36 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 4, 2006
What the Chamberlain School Is, and What It Ain't
Category: Miscellaneous
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...
Posted by Chris at 4:20 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Terror Management Theory On Women, the Body, Sex, and Children
Category: Cognitive Psychology
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...
Posted by Chris at 9:02 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Geographical Obscenities
Category: Miscellaneous
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...
Posted by Chris at 1:18 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 3, 2006
Calendrical Savants
Category: Cognitive Psychology
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...
Posted by Chris at 10:24 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 2, 2006
Does Red Weigh More Than Blue?
Category: Cognitive Psychology
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...
Posted by Chris at 9:30 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
December 1, 2006
Recovered Memories: Forgetting What We've Remembered?
Category: Cognitive Psychology
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...
Posted by Chris at 9:00 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
