Cognitive Science

In The Conjurer, by Hieronymus Bosch (above), a medieval European magician performs in front of a small crowd. As the spectators marvel at the conjurer's tricks, their attention is diverted away from the pickpockets who steal their belongings. The painting illustrates well that magicians throughout the ages have had an understanding of attention and awareness, and that their art is in large part based on their ability to subtlely manipulate these processes in their audience. Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in what magic can teach us about the brain. A year ago, scientists…
In recent years, researchers have found that a wide variety of animal species, many of the cognitive skills that were once thought to be unique to humans. These findings show that we have grossly underestimated the intelligence of other animals, and that we are not as different from them as we like to think we are. So, below are 5 amazing feats of animal intelligence which have been observed (and, in some cases, captured on film) over the past few years. 1. Plotnik et al (2006) have shown that elephants are capable of self -awareness. In the film clip below, the elephant recognizes itself in…
Steven Pinker: The evolutionary man. Also check out the GNXP interview with Pinker from 2 years ago.
Our closest extant relatives have received a fair bit of attention in the past few days, with the publication of two new studies which have been picked up by numerous news outlets. First came the study by Fraser et al, which shows that chimps, like humans, console each other with physical contact following bouts of aggression. This was found to occur more often when a fight between two chimps was not followed by reconciliation, and was more likely to take place between individuals that share a close relationship. This study was quickly followed by that of Townsend et al, who show that female…
Below is a video of a recent talk given by Carl Zimmer about the evolution of the mind, at the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, NYC.
Steven Pinker has a new essay in The New York Times Magazine, The Moral Instinct. Chris of Mixing Memory is critical of Pinker when he goes outside of his specialization in the psychology of language...but I did enjoy the ending: Far from debunking morality, then, the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend. As Anton Chekhov wrote, "Man will become better when you show him what he is like." Knowledge is power.
Salon has a must read interview of Steven Pinker & Rebecca Goldstein.
Steven Pinker on why we curse.
Many of you have heard of the Ultimatum Game: The ultimatum game is an experimental economics game in which two parties interact anonymously and only once, so reciprocation is not an issue. The first player proposes how to divide a sum of money with the second party. If the second player rejects this division, neither gets anything. If the second accepts, the first gets his demand and the second gets the rest. In theory a "rational" player should accept whatever is offered when there isn't a repeated iteration. Reality is different. From The Economist: ...Those results recorded, Dr Burnham…
You know you've hit the big time when you are on CNN. Kind of like Anna Nicole.
Bryan Caplan reviews a survey which suggests that women are more religious cross-culturally than men. If you've been involved in the Freethought movement this won't surprise you. Here's an important point: Once people admit that this gender gap exists, the most popular explanation is that women are "socialized" to be more religious. Stark and Miller put this theory to the test. If the socialization hypothesis is true, they reason, then the gender gap should be larger in more traditional societies where socialization pressure is more intense. Make sense to me. Survey says: Dead wrong.…
Chris has two posts on psychology and religion which are worth reading.
Steven Pinker has a piece where he slams George Lakoff in The New Republic. Unfortunately like much of the best stuff in TNR this is behind a pay wall, though The American Scene has posted a snip. Chris has a lot of Lakoff criticism over at his old blog, and as a political liberal himself I hope that insulates him from the charge that he is biased in some way. I actually read Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think back in the late 1990s, and remember thinking a lot "where does this dude get off telling me what I think!" I was a more strident libertarian back then and I wasn…
Over at Gene Expression Classic MC Kawffee Mugz throws down 10 questions with neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux. I wish I knew more about neuroscience, but I can recommend LeDoux's The Synaptic Self, since I've read it....
In my post below I engage with some commenters in my perceptions of "what religion is." To understand where I am coming from, I thought I would be explicit in some of my assumptions and models. 1) Modern religions often have some very specific beliefs about the nature of God. For example, the Western religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) tend to hod that God a) is omniscient b) is omnipotent c) is omnibenevolent There are deeper philosophical issues, for example, theologians often speak of the deity in negations because to define what God is is very difficult due to the nature of the…
Over at my other weblog "Darth Quixote" interviews cognitive science superstar Steven Pinker. While I've got your attention, here are some other 10 questions.... John Derbyshire, conservative writer.Armand Leroi, evolutionary & developmental biologist.Warren Treadgold, Byzantine historian.Dan Sperber, cognitive anthropologist.Ken Miller, cell biologist.Judith Rich Harris, social & developmental psychologist.Justin L. Barrett, cognitive psychologist.David HaigAdam K. Webb., political scientist.James F. Crow, population geneticist.
RPM got me thinking about two things today. First, what's up with the new picture. Second, Francis Collins' is repeating his experiences with religion. Four points The equanimity of his religous patients in the face of cruel fate fascinated him He was struck by the arguments in C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity (i.e., "Christians can make rational arguments!"). An epiphany as he was hiking through the Cascade mountains. This is an area where you have to be careful to distinguish between the reasons people sincerely believe they believe in x, and the real causes at work here. Psychologists have…
I received an interesting email from the lead researcher on the work reported in the earlier post on prosopagnosia: Dear Razib, I appreciate your comments (and scepticsm) about our reported work and the thoughts about continuums (aspergers/autism). One possibly clarifying point -- Face recognition is just one aspect of face specific processing. Humans are are also adept at judging emotion, mood, intention, age, attractiveness in faces. Its our experience that the majority of prosopagnosic individuals (with some notable exceptions) are pretty much normal in performing these arguably…
I had a strange experience the other day. I was walking down a hallway, and all of a sudden the name of a local software company came to mind. I didn't understand why I was thinking about this, and I was mulling over this strange issue when 20 seconds after I'd started thinking about the company in question, a woman to my right nodded in my direction (she was a few people over). And bingo, all of a sudden I realized why I'd been thinking about that company, the woman was the roommate of another individual who I knew worked at that company. The peculiar thing is that it is clear that one…
Reader Mengu Gulmen emailed me about our exchange in regards to how we view the development of the mind: Mengu: Every decision we make, everything we do and say, is based on the previous experiences we've had [all we did, all we have learned from our schools and our families and friends and internet and .... Myself: This sounds close to tabula rasa. See the cognitive revolution for why I disagree. Mengu then sent me this link, and stated: Our neurodevelopment is closely related with our experiences (what our 'sensors' provide us) throughout our lives. So our thoughts are shaped according…