An entrée of Cognitive Science with an occasional side of whatever the hell else I want to talk about.
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.
The Mixing Memory Reading Group is a place for experts and non-experts alike to discuss books and papers in cognitive science.
January 22, 2007
Category: Social Cognition
If you're a New Scientist reader, you may have come across this article titled "Beauty is in the eye of your friends." The brief article (which I found via 3 Quarks Daily) describes research purporting to show that whether (heterosexual)...
Posted by Chris at 9:13 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 20, 2007
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Last year, I wrote two really long, boring posts about V.S. Ramachandran's ten principles of art. Those principles, mostly drawn from research on vision, included things like peak shift, symmetry, and contrast. It turns out Ramachandran may have missed a...
Posted by Chris at 9:48 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 17, 2007
Category: Blogs and Blogging
So RPM of Evolgen and I were sitting around, chattin' about science blogging, when we suddenly realized that more and more, what science bloggers blog about is dictated not by science, but by anti-science. Creationists, global warming skeptics, anti-vaccine nuts,...
Posted by Chris at 3:22 PM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 15, 2007
Category: Blogs and Blogging
Welcome, everyone, to the 14th installment of the brain blogging carnival Encephalon. If you're in the United States, I hope you've got today off, and that you've at least taken a moment to think about the contribution that Rev. Martin...
Posted by Chris at 12:57 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 13, 2007
Category: Cognitive Psychology
Originally posted on the old blog on 3/12/2006 My contribution to Darwin Day was pretty weak for a staunch supporter of science. Sure, I think the name is a bad idea, and want to rename it "Evolution Day," or at...
Posted by Chris at 8:25 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 11, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
I meant to post this a long time ago, but forgot about it. Here's the story of a cognitive neuroscientist who, using what he's learned about cognition in grad school, won $500,000 on the show "Who Wants to Be a...
Posted by Chris at 8:26 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 8, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
Via Sandra over at OmniBrain, I learned about We Have Pie Charts, where just about everything you would never describe with a pie chart is described with a pie chart. Here are two of my favorites: A Day In the...
Posted by Chris at 10:51 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 5, 2007
Category: Philosophy
Here's an article from Physics Web (via 3 Quarks Daily) that seems appropriate, in the context of the last two posts. Here's the conclusion of the article: But the image of the book of nature can haunt us today. One...
Posted by Chris at 10:00 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Philosophy
Comments on the last post make it clear that my use of the label "scientism" is far from clear. It does not mean a rejection of science, or its methods (though I do have to roll my eyes when someone...
Posted by Chris at 9:06 PM • 187 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 4, 2007
Category: Philosophy
When science replaces religion, it becomes more and more like religion, and in the minds of its worshipers, can justify the same sorts of inhumanities. Witness Richard Dawkins, todays leading worshiper of science, calling for deposed dictators to be used...
Posted by Chris at 11:29 PM • 83 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 3, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
I just learned, via Brian Leiter's blog, that Robert Solomon has died. I have been a big fan since I was an undergrad, especially because his book In the Spirit of Hegel helped me to break the "Hegel code" that...
Posted by Chris at 6:41 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Miscellaneous
It's a new year, and that means it's time for Edge.org's annual silly question. This year, in addition to giving the question to scientists and philosophers, they also gave it to business people, and even Brian Eno. As in the...
Posted by Chris at 2:25 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 2, 2007
Category: Blogs and Blogging
ScienceBlogs has added another brain sciences blog, Chris Chatham's Developing Intelligence. Welcome, Chris....
Posted by Chris at 2:26 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 1, 2007
Category: Miscellaneous
Regular cognitive science posting will resume in the very near future, but for the holiday, I thought I'd go with something a bit lighter. What's your favorite opening paragraph in a book? I've always liked the standards: Notes from the...
Posted by Chris at 9:16 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
