Cognitive Science News
mixingmemory | March 29, 2008You can see Josh Knobe, of Experimental Philosophy fame, and Paul Bloom, who doesn't have a blog but has one of them professorship things up at some podunk little school in New Haven, CT, talking about research in moral psychology here.
mixingmemory | October 20, 2006Over the next few months, several cognitive science books will be coming out that look really interesting. I thought I'd list a few of them, in case you're interested in checking them out once they're published.
The Prehistory of Cognitive Science - Andrew Brook, Editor
Description
Featuring contributions from leading figures such as Noam Chomsky, Don Ross, Andrew Brook and Patricia Kitcher, this book traces the philosophical roots behind contemporary understandings of cognition, forming both a convincing case for the centrality of philosophy to the history of neuroscience and cognitive…
mixingmemory | September 24, 2006Via Will Wilkerson, I learned of Richard Rorty's very good review of Marc Hauser's Moral Minds. He's very critical both of Hauser's moral nativism and of Hauser's more optimistic claims about the study of moral psychology. John McKhail, who is a moral nativist, and has done some interesting work on the topic (which I've cited on this blog), replies to Rorty's review here.
I've been talking about this subject for about a year now here on the blog, and have been interested in the literature (and thinking of ways to put my hat into the moral psychology ring) for a few years now, so I'm somewhat…
mixingmemory | July 3, 2006The first edition of the new neuroscience carnival Encephalon is now up at The Neurophilosopher's Blog, here. There are several good posts, and I actually learned a bit from some of them.
I have to admit, though, that I'm particularly partial to this post from BrainTechSci. A sample:
It is hard not to notice the fact that an unusually high percentage of Nobel laureates, from Gerald Edelman to Francis Crick turn their attention to the problem of consciousness and formulate embarrassingly ridiculous theories of consciousness. Why is that?
Then there are people who are completely outside the…
mixingmemory | July 2, 2006Over at Gene Expression, "Darth Quixote's" (George Menard's rewriting of Cervantes? That's a bad joke, isn't it?) 10-question interview with Steven Pinker was posted today. You can read it here. The questions are pretty good, for the most part, and Pinker's answers are interesting. I agree with Pinker on the issue of politics getting in the way of science, whether the politics are right-wing or left. I have no problem with research on potentially innate differences between populations, in part because I think the political implications of the results will be dictated by pre-existing biases,…