Philosophy posts
- March 29, 2012
- 03:08 PM
- 540 views
Animism as Altruistic Adaptation
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
I have a confession to make. I’ve long denigrated claims that what we today call “religion” originated during the Upper Paleolithic because early supernaturalism fostered altruism. When this argument makes an appearance, it’s often in the service of an evolutionary theism which assumes that because God is behind evolution, religion is the designed outcome of [...]... Read more »
Bird‐David, Nurit. (1999) “Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40(S1). DOI: 10.1086/200061
Bird-David, Nurit. (1992) Beyond "The Original Affluent Society": A Culturalist Reformulation. Current Anthropology, 33(1), 25-34. info:/
- March 23, 2012
- 04:56 AM
- 843 views
The Bizarreness Effect and Spotting E.T.
by Jason Carr in Wired Cosmos
Recently I’ve been researching historical accounts of UFO sightings/alien abductions (this topic never ceases to fascinate me) and exploring possible scientific explanations for their occurrences when I stumbled across a theory known as the bizarreness effect. I thought I would share a little of what I’ve learned of this theory and would love to hear [...]... Read more »
Clark, S., & Loftus, E. (1996) The Construction of Space Alien Abduction Memories. Psychological Inquiry, 7(2), 140-143. DOI: 10.1207/s15327965pli0702_5
Kelley-Romano, S. (2006) Mythmaking in Alien Abduction Narratives. Communication Quarterly, 54(3), 383-406. DOI: 10.1080/01463370600878545
McDaniel MA, Einstein GO, DeLosh EL, May CP, & Brady P. (1995) The bizarreness effect: it's not surprising, it's complex. Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 21(2), 422-435. PMID: 7738508
Macklin, C., & McDaniel, M. (2005) The bizarreness effect: Dissociation between item and source memory. Memory, 13(7), 682-689. DOI: 10.1080/09658210444000304
Worthen, J., & Wood, V. (2001) A Disruptive Effect of Bizarreness on Memory for Relational and Contextual Details of Self-Performed and Other-Performed Acts. The American Journal of Psychology, 114(4), 535. DOI: 10.2307/1423609
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- March 9, 2012
- 01:46 PM
- 518 views
Have connectionist models killed off beliefs?
by Ben in Critical Science
Connectionist models are widely held to have had a revolutionary impact upon cognitive science (Marcus, 2001). However, they are also employed in a highly controversial doctrine known as ‘eliminative materialism’, which claims the central posits of our common understanding of human psychology, including our conception of ‘beliefs’, are entirely false (Ramsey, Stitch & Garon, 1990). If such arguments are accepted, a radical reorientation is necessary in how we perceive and........ Read more »
Ramsey, W., Stich, S., & Garon, J. (1990) Connectionism, Eliminativism and The Future of Folk Psychology. Philosophical Perspectives, 499. DOI: 10.2307/2214202
- March 8, 2012
- 05:12 PM
- 363 views
Gender Differences in Science and Math Abilities? Not In This Matrilineal Society
by David Berreby in Mind Matters
Happy International Day of You, women of the world. Unfortunately it remains internationally respectable to argue that science has shown that men are inherently better at math and scientific pursuits than you are. This belief is based on the gender difference in scores on standardized tests ...Read More
... Read more »
Hoffman, M., Gneezy, U., & List, J. (2011) Nurture affects gender differences in spatial abilities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(36), 14786-14788. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1015182108
- March 6, 2012
- 03:03 AM
- 287 views
Free Will: A Dangerous Idea?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
The British Journal of Social Psychology has published a fiery rebuke to psychologists who argue that belief in free will makes people more ethical.Recent much-publicized studies have claimed that scepticism about free will makes people behave less morally. "Disbelief in Free Will Increases Aggression and Reduces Helpfulness" as the title of one of hese papers puts it.In his article (free pdf), British 'independent researcher' James B. Miles says that these experiments are flawed, because they d........ Read more »
Miles JB. (2011) 'Irresponsible and a Disservice': The integrity of social psychology turns on the free will dilemma. The British journal of social psychology / the British Psychological Society. PMID: 22074173
- March 4, 2012
- 02:28 PM
- 586 views
4 reasons why all women should play Mass Effect
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
Another adventure outside of the 'cellular neuroscience' walls for The Cellular Scale. Today we are traveling to the land of video games, video games and women. Commander Shepard, the most badass woman in the galaxyMass Effect 3 is being released in a few days and I thought I would use this time (while my xbox is downloading the free demo) to write about why the world would be a better (or at least slightly more gender-neutral) place if all women played Mass Effec........ Read more »
Galinsky AD, Wang CS, & Ku G. (2008) Perspective-takers behave more stereotypically. Journal of personality and social psychology, 95(2), 404-19. PMID: 18665710
- February 29, 2012
- 09:55 AM
- 577 views
Playing “Good Cop, Bad Cop” with Octopuses
by Miss Behavior in The Scorpion and the Frog
Have you ever seen an octopus in an aquarium, or maybe even in the ocean, and thought, “I know you!”? No? Well, they might think that when they see you!We’ve known for some time that many domestic animals, like dogs, can tell us people apart. It turns out that a lot of animal species can recognize individual people. But how do we humans know that? It’s not like you can walk right up to an animal and say “Hey! Remember me?” ...Well, I guess you could do that, but how would you interpr........ Read more »
Anderson RC, Mather JA, Monette MQ, & Zimsen SR. (2010) Octopuses (Enteroctopus dofleini) recognize individual humans. Journal of applied animal welfare science : JAAWS, 13(3), 261-72. PMID: 20563906
- February 19, 2012
- 07:39 PM
- 696 views
Neurosexism and Delusions of Gender
by TheCellularScale in The Cellular Scale
On the cellular scale, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to tell the brains of men and women apart. That is, if you zoom in on a part of the brain (like the hippocampus, cortex or striatum) and look at the morphology of a single neuron or the electrical characteristics of that neuron, you would be hard pressed to tell if the neuron you are looking at belongs to a male or a female. This is not very surprising since it is also difficult to tell if the neuron you are looking ........ Read more »
Di Liberto V, Mäkelä J, Korhonen L, Olivieri M, Tselykh T, Mälkiä A, Do Thi H, Belluardo N, Lindholm D, & Mudò G. (2012) Involvement of estrogen receptors in the resveratrol-mediated increase in dopamine transporter in human dopaminergic neurons and in striatum of female mice. Neuropharmacology, 62(2), 1011-8. PMID: 22041555
- February 17, 2012
- 02:29 PM
- 599 views
Vanquishing the Soul: Gall & Phrenology
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
Thinking is a strange thing. So strange, in fact, that most people think that whatever is doing the thinking must have a life of its own. This idea, commonsense dualism, has been around a long time and is the default position for most people regardless of culture. It’s a hard habit or intuition to break, [...]... Read more »
McLaren, Angus. (1974) Phrenology: Medium and Message. The Journal of Modern History, 46(1), 86. DOI: 10.1086/241166
Castro-Caldas, A., & Grafman, J. (2000) Those Were the (Phrenological) Days. The Neuroscientist, 6(4), 297-302. DOI: 10.1177/107385840000600412
McLaren Angus. (1981) A prehistory of the social sciences: phrenology in France. Comparative studies in society and history, 23(1), 3-22. PMID: 11614370
- February 12, 2012
- 02:01 PM
- 537 views
Chemical Ghosts in the Machine
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
If we think deeply about evolution, we eventually will ask questions not about the origin of species but about the origin of life. For some theistic evolutionists, this is the point of Designer intervention. They find it hard to imagine that chemicals could combine in way that gives rise to life. For those less inclined [...]... Read more »
Urey, Harold. (1952) On the Early Chemical History of the Earth and the Origin of Life. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 38(4), 351-363. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.38.4.351
Peretó J. (2005) Controversies on the origin of life. International microbiology : the official journal of the Spanish Society for Microbiology, 8(1), 23-31. PMID: 15906258
Joyce, G. (1989) RNA evolution and the origins of life. Nature, 338(6212), 217-224. DOI: 10.1038/338217a0
Orgel LE. (1998) The origin of life--a review of facts and speculations. Trends in biochemical sciences, 23(12), 491-5. PMID: 9868373
- February 11, 2012
- 03:16 PM
- 488 views
Life is short
by Iddo Friedberg in Byte Size Biology
Continuing with rather philosophical musings about life, Ed Trifonov has recently suggested a new approach to defining life: let’s just vote on the definition.
So how does that work? And why should it work in the first place?... Read more »
Trifonov EN. (2011) Vocabulary of definitions of life suggests a definition. Journal of biomolecular structure , 29(2), 259-66. PMID: 21875147
- February 7, 2012
- 09:10 AM
- 766 views
Military Use of Neuroscience Should Be Regulated, Report Warns
by United Academics in United Academics
tDCS is a form of neurostimulation that, in the case of the research mentioned above, led to a better detection of concealed objects, based on the fact that the brain detects things before the subject is consciously aware of them. The results also showed that it may improve learning abilities, thus decreasing “the time required to attain expertise in a variety of settings,” according to the study.... Read more »
Clark, V., Coffman, B., Mayer, A., Weisend, M., Lane, T., Calhoun, V., Raybourn, E., Garcia, C., & Wassermann, E. (2012) TDCS guided using fMRI significantly accelerates learning to identify concealed objects. NeuroImage, 59(1), 117-128. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.11.036
- January 27, 2012
- 10:10 AM
- 744 views
Oxford University Censor First Broadcast of Lecture That Resulted in Censuring of Prof. Nutt, Former UK Government Drugs Advisor
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
Watch the full video of the lecture and uncover what was in the slides censored for "copyright reasons"... Read more »
Nutt, D., King, L., & Phillips, L. (2010) Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis. The Lancet, 376(9752), 1558-1565. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61462-6
Nutt, D. (2009) Estimating drug harms: a risky business?. Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. info:/
Halpern JH, Sherwood AR, Hudson JI, Gruber S, Kozin D, & Pope HG Jr. (2011) Residual neurocognitive features of long-term ecstasy users with minimal exposure to other drugs. Addiction (Abingdon, England), 106(4), 777-86. PMID: 21205042
Carhart-Harris, R., Erritzoe, D., Williams, T., Stone, J., Reed, L., Colasanti, A., Tyacke, R., Leech, R., Malizia, A., Murphy, K.... (2012) Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1119598109
Editorial team. (2010) The EMCDDA annual report 2010: the state of the drugs problem in Europe. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, also published in Euro surveillance :European communicable disease bulletin, 15(46). PMID: 21144426
- January 26, 2012
- 01:14 PM
- 826 views
NOT "Killed by Cannabis"
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
A quick factual decomposition of the assertion that cannabis is lethal, made by the Daily Mail in response to Richard Branson's evidence at the Select Committee on drugs.... Read more »
Hughes CE, & Stevens A. (2012) A resounding success or a disastrous failure: Re-examining the interpretation of evidence on the Portuguese decriminalisation of illicit drugs. Drug and alcohol review, 31(1), 101-13. PMID: 22212070
- January 25, 2012
- 03:59 AM
- 379 views
The Hidden Face Within
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
One of these two images contains a hidden picture of a face. Which one?This was the question faced by participants in a remarkable psychology experiment just published, Measuring Internal Representations from Behavioral and Brain Data. Five healthy volunteers were presented with a series of random black and white grid patterns. Each grid square was either black or white, and this was randomly determined on each trial.There was no pattern to the images, they were completely random. But the subjec........ Read more »
Smith, M., Gosselin, F., & Schyns, P. (2012) Measuring Internal Representations from Behavioral and Brain Data. Current Biology. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2011.11.061
- January 24, 2012
- 10:24 PM
- 345 views
“Who’s There?” Is The Self A Convenient Fiction?
by Sam McNerney in Why We Reason
For a long time people thought that the self was unified and eternal. It’s easy to see why. We feel like we have an essence; we grow old, gain and lose friends, and change preferences but we are the same person from day one. The idea of the unified self has had a rough few [...]... Read more »
Volpe BT, Ledoux JE, & Gazzaniga MS. (1979) Information processing of visual stimuli in an "extinguished" field. Nature, 282(5740), 722-4. PMID: 514351
- January 20, 2012
- 05:28 PM
- 727 views
Copyright Talk: The RIAA Bites the Hand That Feeds
by DJ Busby in Astronasty
The perpetrators seem to be the RIAA's best friends. They just haven't have realized it yet. This should be motivation enough for the RIAA's to halt their lobbying, at least until they learn to read. In a business sense, for them to push the legislation of SOPA/PIPA seems ridiculous, given this context, doesn't it?... Read more »
Marta Ceballos. (2003) An Overview of Copyright and Intellectual Property . Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues. info:/
Bounie, D., Bourreau, M., & Waelbroeck, P. (2005) Pirates or Explorers? Analysis of Music Consumption in French Graduate Schools. SSRN Electronic Journal. DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.739284
- January 16, 2012
- 09:51 AM
- 979 views
Is this journal for real?
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
This year 134 suspect new journals have appeared from the abyss, all published by the same clandestine company “Scientific & Academic Publishing, USA“. Scientists have been quick to raise the alarm and ruthless in their response.... Read more »
Morrison, Heather. (2012) Scholarly Communication in Crisis. Freedom for scholarship in the internet age. Simon Fraser University School of Communication. info:/
- January 16, 2012
- 08:00 AM
- 387 views
What Are the Costs of Lending a Helping Hand?
by Krystal D'Costa in Anthropology in Practice
I boarded my commuter train with all of five minutes to spare, so I knew my prospects for getting a seat were slim. That didn’t bother me too much since the vestibule was mostly empty—there was a man standing at the other door silently rocking out to whatever was playing on his headphones, so I [...]
... Read more »
Bartal, I., Decety, J., & Mason, P. (2011) Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats. Science, 334(6061), 1427-1430. DOI: 10.1126/science.1210789
de Waal, F. (2007) With a Little Help from a Friend. PLoS Biology, 5(7). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0050190
Shapiro, E. (1980) Is Seeking Help from a Friend Like Seeking Help from a Stranger?. Social Psychology Quarterly, 43(2), 259. DOI: 10.2307/3033629
Schwartz, S., & David, A. (1976) Responsibility and Helping in an Emergency: Effects of Blame, Ability and Denial of Responsibility. Sociometry, 39(4), 406. DOI: 10.2307/3033505
Stevens, J. (2004) The selfish nature of generosity: harassment and food sharing in primates. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 271(1538), 451-456. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2003.2625
Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003) The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425(6960), 785-791. DOI: 10.1038/nature02043
Horner, V., Carter, J., Suchak, M., & de Waal, F. (2011) Spontaneous prosocial choice by chimpanzees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(33), 13847-13851. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1111088108
- January 10, 2012
- 02:58 PM
- 395 views
The Plight of Psychoanalysis?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
A New York psychoanalyst reveals her concerns about the profession in A Letter to Freud: On the Plight of PsychoanalysisDinah M. Mendes's letter covers several topics, but I was struck by the sections that deal with the contemporary challenges facing American analysts. She paints a rather sad picture of analysts who spend years in training, only to find a shortage of people out there who want their treatment:At psychoanalytic training institutes it is often difficult for candidates to secure con........ Read more »
Mendes, D. (2011) Letter to Freud: On the Plight of Psychoanalysis. The Psychoanalytic Review, 98(6), 755-774. DOI: 10.1521/prev.2011.98.6.755
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