All posts; Tags Include "Epistemology"
- July 18, 2014
- 03:06 AM
- 267 views
Book Review: Visual Experience: Sensation, Cognition and Constancy
by Farid Pazhoohi in Epistemophil
Mankind has always been interested in the way people perceive the world and this has become one of its main concerns reflected in the fact that early explanations for visual perception date back to ancient Greece. Studies of visual perception were pursued merely in the field of philosophy until the 20th century, when psychologists, and […]... Read more »
Pazhoohi, F. (2014) Visual Experience: Sensation, Cognition and Constancy. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 10(1), 204-207. DOI: 10.5964/ejop.v10i1.731
- September 13, 2011
- 08:38 AM
- 1,362 views
Programming Free Will: creative robots
by Björn Brembs in bjoern.brembs.blog
I wasn't planning to comment on Kerri Smith's piece on Free Will (probably paywalled) in the last issue of Nature magazine. However, this morning I read a paper on Free Will in robots (or rather 'agents'), which urged me to suggest some updates to the sadly (otherwise Ms. Smith is producing outstanding work, especially her podcasts!) outdated discussion in the Nature article.Her article starts out with a modern variation of Libet's famous experiments. These experiments can be caricatured like th........ Read more »
Smith, K. (2011) Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will. Nature, 477(7362), 23-25. DOI: 10.1038/477023a
- June 2, 2011
- 02:37 PM
- 1,633 views
Lost in (Western) Translation
by Cris Campbell in Genealogy of Religion
There is a sense in which we are all cultural narcissists. By this, I mean that because all of us are acculturated at a particular time and in a particular place, we have a strong tendency to view other times and places through our own cultural lens. These lenses are prismatic and what we see [...]... Read more »
Bird-David, Nurit. (1999) "Animism" Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology. DOI: 10.1086/200061
Bergman, I., Ostlund, L., Zackrisson, O., & Liedgren, L. (2008) Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars. Ethnohistory, 55(1), 1-28. DOI: 10.1215/00141801-2007-044
- April 24, 2011
- 01:13 PM
- 1,385 views
Guess This Psychiatric Disorder
by Psychbytes in Psychbytes
Here’s a question for you psychiatrists and clinical psychologists out there. What disorder is characterized by the following symptoms:1. Congenital onset2. Dwarfism3. Emotional lability and immaturity4. Knowledge deficits5. Legume anorexiaNational surveys over the past 20 years have shown that this condition is present in approximately a quarter of the US population at any given time. Still stumped?The name of this “debilitating disorder” is…..wait for it…..CHILD........ Read more »
Jordan W. Smoller. (1985) The etiology and treatment of childhood. Journal of Polymorphous Perversity, 2(2), 3-7. info:/
- March 11, 2011
- 09:03 AM
- 1,791 views
looking for a ghost in the machine, redux
by Greg Fish in weird things
Sometimes I envy philosophers. In what other discipline can one write extensive papers based on a random idea, just running with it for pages on end to see how far it will go? Whenever I have to describe an algorithm, there’s always some the nagging about showing time complexity, in Θ(g(x)) if possible, with a [...]... Read more »
Nick Bostrom. (2003) Are you living in a computer simulation?. Philosophical Quarterly, 53(211), 243-255. info:/
- December 29, 2010
- 04:03 PM
- 1,494 views
Using Google to Tell Real Science from Fads
by David Berreby in Mind Matters
Most hot ideas and discoveries fade with time. But some scientific papers are genuine breakthroughs, whose importance only increases as the decades pass. This one, published in Science last week, which describes a database of words from millions of books digitized by Google—4 percent of all books ...Read More
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Michel, J., Shen, Y., Aiden, A., Veres, A., Gray, M., , ., Pickett, J., Hoiberg, D., Clancy, D., Norvig, P.... (2010) Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1199644
Fanelli, D. (2010) “Positive” Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences. PLoS ONE, 5(4). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010068
- December 23, 2010
- 09:08 PM
- 1,320 views
Three Cheers for Failure!
by David Berreby in Mind Matters
Last week I vowed to pay more attention to replication in psychology experiments. Repeated experiments are an important test of whether a finding is "really out there" or an accident, so, as a number of psychologists have been saying lately to the public, it is kind of a problem that many ...Read More
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Jennifer V. Fayard, Amandeep K. Bassi, Daniel M. Bernstein, & Brent W. Roberts. (2009) Is cleanliness next to godliness? Dispelling old wives’ tales: Failure to replicate Zhong and Liljenquist (2006). Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis, 6(2), 21-29. info:other/1539-8714
Zhong CB, & Liljenquist K. (2006) Washing away your sins: threatened morality and physical cleansing. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5792), 1451-2. PMID: 16960010
- December 17, 2010
- 04:57 PM
- 1,145 views
Of Political Orgasms and the Scientific Method
by David Berreby in Mind Matters
This week's theme is epistemological unease in the sciences: Complaints in a number of disciplines that studies didn't really find the effects they're reporting. One reason for these worries is that many studies nowadays are never repeated. So today I'm going to consciously and rationally resist ...Read More
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Phillips, D., Kanter, E., Bednarczyk, B., & Tastad, P. (1991) Importance of the Lay Press in the Transmission of Medical Knowledge to the Scientific Community. New England Journal of Medicine, 325(16), 1180-1183. DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199110173251620
Markey, P., & Markey, C. (2010) Changes in pornography-seeking behaviors following political elections: an examination of the challenge hypothesis. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31(6), 442-446. DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.06.004
- November 17, 2010
- 09:30 AM
- 1,027 views
Unification: The Metaphysics of Physics
by Jörg Friedrich in Reading Nature
One of the great metaphysical ideas of theoretical physics is the conviction that the forces that act between the things must be described somehow uniform. But just the force that we experience in everyday life and feel completely without the use of measurement devices or even small tools, the gravitational force, will simply not be forced into a single model. Nevertheless, the theorist can not stop to seek a unified description of all forces.... Read more »
Toms DJ. (2010) Quantum gravitational contributions to quantum electrodynamics. Nature, 468(7320), 56-9. PMID: 21048760
David J. Toms. (2010) Quantum gravitational contributions to quantum electrodynamics. Nature 468:56-59,2010. arXiv: 1010.0793v1
Amelino-Camelia G. (2010) Fundamental physics: Gravity's weight on unification. Nature, 468(7320), 40-1. PMID: 21048752
- September 18, 2010
- 10:26 PM
- 1,333 views
Why do we still publish research (via) papers?
by Daniel Mietchen in Research Cycle Research
Mind the bugs in the system: papers. Photo: Jenn Forman Orth When I lost a WiFi connection recently, I was left with the usual error message, which led me to look more attentively at the URL than I am used … Continue reading →... Read more »
Origgi, G. (2010) Epistemic Vigilance and Epistemic Responsibility in the Liquid World of Scientific Publications. Social Epistemology, 24(3), 149-159. DOI: 10.1080/02691728.2010.499179
- July 23, 2010
- 10:53 AM
- 1,130 views
The will and its freedom: biological evidence from invertebrates
by Björn Brembs in bjoern.brembs.blog
A few weeks ago, Lars Chittka invited me to write an article "about free will in insects" for a Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) Special Feature on 'Information processing in miniature brains' that he is editing. Given our work on spontaneity in flies and my mentor being Martin Heisenberg, how could I decline?I think I will first give a very brief overview of what people used to call "free will" and why it was such a controversy. I hope to get the gist across in about tw........ Read more »
Heisenberg, M. (2009) Is free will an illusion?. Nature, 459(7244), 164-165. DOI: 10.1038/459164a
Doyle, R. (2009) Free will: it's a normal biological property, not a gift or a mystery. Nature, 459(7250), 1052-1052. DOI: 10.1038/4591052c
Briggman, K. (2005) Optical Imaging of Neuronal Populations During Decision-Making. Science, 307(5711), 896-901. DOI: 10.1126/science.1103736
Maye, A., Hsieh, C., Sugihara, G., & Brembs, B. (2007) Order in Spontaneous Behavior. PLoS ONE, 2(5). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000443
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- July 20, 2010
- 07:09 AM
- 1,588 views
Why you REALLY can’t trust small studies: the small study effect
by Michael Slezak in Good, Bad, and Bogus
You’ll often see loony zealots refer you to a study showing how effective their preferred treatment is — there usually is some small study supporting the use of almost any treatment.
You’ll also often hear people reply that the study was only small, so shouldn’t be trusted. But why shouldn’t you trust small studies? Sure, they [...]... Read more »
Nüesch E, Trelle S, Reichenbach S, Rutjes AW, Tschannen B, Altman DG, Egger M, & Jüni P. (2010) Small study effects in meta-analyses of osteoarthritis trials: meta-epidemiological study. BMJ. PMID: 20639294
- July 16, 2010
- 08:59 AM
- 1,537 views
Parrots, People and Pedagogies: A Look at Teaching and Education
by GrrlScientist in Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)
Like anyone who has taught science courses, and probably like anyone who has ever taught anything to a classroom in the history of mankind, I've wondered how to motivate my students to really care about the material they are learning, beyond simply "studying for the test." For example, I have used a group method of study where groups of 4 students are each assigned a specific task: to become an expert in a particular area and to share their knowledge with the other groups. This method is only p........ Read more »
McCallum, M. (2010) A Method for Encouraging Classroom Discussion of Scientific Papers. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America, 91(3), 363-366. DOI: 10.1890/0012-9623-91.3.363
- July 16, 2010
- 04:23 AM
- 1,733 views
‘Gravity doesn’t exist’, says philosophically naive scientist/journalist
by Michael Slezak in Good, Bad, and Bogus
Reports of a physicist “taking on gravity” have recieved a bit of attention recently, with a New York Times article outlining Erik Verlinde’s idea that gravity is an emergent property of thermodynamics.
I think it’s great that the piece was written — even though apparently it hasn’t excited any physicists since the start of the year. Regardless [...]... Read more »
Erik P. Verlinde. (2010) On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton. arxiv.org. arXiv: 1001.0785v1
Bertrand Russell. (1912) On the notion of cause. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. info:other/
- May 28, 2010
- 09:22 AM
- 1,054 views
Falling Child Mortality - Where we are on Millennium Development Goal 4
by Ryan in Upon*the.People
The release several days ago of revised estimates for global child mortality showing that mortality has fallen faster than we previously expected was a cause for celebration. As one of the eight targets of the Millennium Development Goals, child mortality is among the better indicators we have for the health status of a given population, and is, in the words of Michael Marmot, "the health outcome most sensitive to the effects of absolute material deprivation."[Children in Burma; The Ir........ Read more »
Rajaratnam, J., Marcus, J., Flaxman, A., Wang, H., Levin-Rector, A., Dwyer, L., Costa, M., Lopez, A., & Murray, C. (2010) Neonatal, postneonatal, childhood, and under-5 mortality for 187 countries, 1970–2010: a systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 4. The Lancet. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60703-9
- March 29, 2010
- 11:39 PM
- 1,497 views
Climate change and philosophy of science: Does climate science aim at truth?
by Michael Slezak in Good, Bad, and Bogus
A couple of weeks ago there was an interesting exchange in The Guardian between George Monbiot and Nicholas Maxwell, a philosopher of science from University College London. In his piece, Monbiot presents an excellent, if overly pessimistic, analysis of the psychology behind climate change denial. In his response, Maxwell draws on some interesting results from the philosophy [...]... Read more »
Cartwright, Nancy. (2004) Do the laws of physics state the facts?. Readings on the Laws of Nature. info:/
Kitcher, P. (1981) Explanatory Unification. Philosophy of Science, 48(4), 507. DOI: 10.1086/289019
- January 21, 2010
- 09:25 PM
- 1,800 views
Actually, maybe economists did prove money can buy happiness…
by Michael Slezak in Good, Bad, and Bogus
A little while ago, I wrote a post about an article in Science about the relationship between “objective” measurements of “quality of life” and subjective measurements of “life-satisfaction”. The article found a very high correlation between these measurements leading the authors to claim that there was now “objective verification” of the subjective measurements often used [...]... Read more »
Oswald, A., & Wu, S. (2009) Objective Confirmation of Subjective Measures of Human Well-Being: Evidence from the U.S.A. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1180606
Schwarz, N., Strack, F., & Mai, H. (1991) Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Part-Whole Question Sequences: A Conversational Logic Analysis. Public Opinion Quarterly, 55(1), 3. DOI: 10.1086/269239
Norbert Schwarz, & Fritz Strack. (1991) Context Effects in Attitude Surveys: Applying Cognitive Theory to Social Research. European Review of Social Psychology. info:/
Oishi, S. (2003) The contextual and systematic nature of life satisfaction judgments. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39(3), 232-247. DOI: 10.1016/S0022-1031(03)00016-7
Schkade, D., & Kahneman, D. (1998) Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction. Psychological Science, 9(5), 340-346. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9280.00066
- November 10, 2009
- 11:33 PM
- 1,236 views
'Cause I said so... The Sufficient-Component Cause model and what it can tell us about cancer screening: Part I
by Ryan in Evidence-Based Public Health
... Read more »
Flanders WD. (2006) On the relationship of sufficient component cause models with potential outcome (counterfactual) models. European journal of epidemiology, 21(12), 847-53. PMID: 17048084
- May 14, 2009
- 09:15 AM
- 2,282 views
Does child depression exist as a categorical construct?
by Nestor Lopez-Duran PhD in Child-Psych
One of the most controversial and complex issues affecting the field of clinical psychology and psychiatry is how to integrate two distinct conceptualization of psychiatric conditions. Our field has been dominated by a disease model, in which psychiatric disorders are viewed as discrete categories. That is, a disorder is either present or absent (e.g., you [...]... Read more »
Richey, J., Schmidt, N., Lonigan, C., Phillips, B., Catanzaro, S., Laurent, J., Gerhardstein, R., & Kotov, R. (2009) The latent structure of child depression: a taxometric analysis. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2009.02085.x
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