mixingmemory
Posts by this author
June 18, 2007
In his comment to my post on conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), reposted here, Dr. Gibbs writes:
The topic of why conceptual metaphor theory arouses such vehemence is one that greatly interests me and is again the subject of my in progress book. My own opinion is that conceptual metaphor theory, and…
June 18, 2007
In the previous entry, I made some disparaging remarks about conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), and George Lakoff specifically. I also noted that, in my experience,, the psycholinguist Raymond Gibbs, Jr. is the only one in the cognitive linguistics who seriously addresses the evidence and…
June 17, 2007
In case you haven't heard about it, there's a relatively new blog in the cognitive science section of the blog world called Cognitive Approaches to Literature. They don't post very often over there, but if they ever start doing so, it promises to be an interesting read with lively discussions. The…
June 16, 2007
First, an obituary by his friend, Jürgen Habermas. It begins with a story of Rorty making light of the illness that ultimately killed him:
After three or four paragraphs of sarcastic analysis came the unexpected sentence: " Alas, I have come down with the same disease that killed Derrida." As if to…
June 11, 2007
Those of you who are interested in Michael Tomasello's work as a follow up to his book The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition may be interested in his new paper with Malinda Carpenter and Ulf Liszkowski, "A New Look at Infant Pointing". The abstract:
We propose a new theory of infant pointing…
June 9, 2007
I just learned that Richard Rorty died Friday. I was a big fan of his work as an undergrad, and at that time both Consequences of Pragmatism and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity had a big influence on my thinking. I suppose they still do indirectly, though I'm less impressed with them now than I…
June 8, 2007
About a year ago, there was an article in Seed Magazine titled "Seduced by the Flickering Lights of the Brain," in which Paul Bloom argued that people are too easily seduced by neuroscience, believing that it made for good science, even when it doesn't. At the end of the article, Bloom mentioned a…
June 6, 2007
Originally posted on the old blog on 4/5/06, and reposted here and now out of laziness.
It's easy to see why research on motivated political reasoning/cognition has gotten a lot of attention in the blogosophere lately. It fits nicely with our intuitions about how people interpret political…
June 5, 2007
Over the last couple decades there's been a pretty heated debate about which, if any, nonhuman animals possess a "theory of mind," that is, the ability to think about what others are thinking. Much of the research bearing on this debate has used false belief tasks. There are many variants, but the…
June 3, 2007
I've always really liked this song, but I've never understood a single word of it. Fortunately, some guy figured them all out for me:
These are apparently the actual lyrics, but how would you know?
May 31, 2007
The belief that creativity and political conservatism are negatively correlated is widespread not only among the general public (except, maybe, among some conservatives), but among researchers in a variety of fields. And there are some indirect empirical justifications for this belief. Political…
May 28, 2007
Originally posted on the old blog on Memorial Day 2005.
On Memorial Day, I'm always reminded of the poems of war because, perhaps more than any other form of literature, they paint of it a picture that is more real than romantic (except maybe in Tennyson). In particular, I am reminded of the poetry…
May 28, 2007
A little over a year ago, I wrote a post describing some research showing that there are cognitive barriers to understanding evolution. There I listed three specific factors:
Intuitive theism, in which our intuitions lead us to make design inferences about complex kinds or under conditions of…
May 27, 2007
I haven't really updated the blogroll much since, well, I first created it. So if you've got a blog that fits into one of the categories over there on the left, including "seriously good but I don't know what to call it," and you want me to add you, leave a comment or drop me an email so I can…
May 26, 2007
Last night, I took my son to his favorite diner to celebrate the end of 3rd grade. Just before our dinner arrived, a song came on the radio and he stopped talking, listened for a second, and said, "Hey, it's my favorite song!" This is what was playing:
His revelation was timely, since today is…
May 19, 2007
Everybody's seen Kanizsa's triangle:
It's a simple illusory figure illusion, first reported by Kanizsa(1). The illusion is likely caused by the processes that the visual system uses to separate figures from their ground(2), but to date there doesn't appear to be any consensus about exactly how…
May 17, 2007
Some of you who are interested in the history of psychology or philosophy of mind might find this paper interesting:
Gentner, D., & Grudin, J. (1985). The evolution of mental metaphors in psychology: A 90-year retrospective. American Psychologist, 40(2), 181-192.
Abstract
It seems plausible…
May 15, 2007
In honor of the announcement of the Best Visual Illusion of the Year (via Steve), I thought I'd revive the old cool visual illusion series. I may post about this year's winner, the leaning tower illusion, in the future, but I just now read the paper, so I have some work to do first. Instead, I'm…
May 14, 2007
The second Online Philosophy Conference has begun, and the first week's presentations are up. If you didn't participate in last year's OPC, here's how it works: a presentation and one or two responses are posted for you to read, and comments are open to everyone for discussion. This year, they've…
May 11, 2007
File this one in the annals of "huh?" There's been a lot of research over the last decade or so on what only be described as the bizarre implicit priming of social concepts. In a typical experiment, participants are given lists or scrambled sentences that contain words associated with a particular…
May 9, 2007
Cool video (via Bill Benzon over at The Valve:
A bit more below the fold, but only after you watch the video.
What a great example of change blindness, eh? I missed them all.
May 8, 2007
From the proud papa.
First, the league's best right fielder:
He hasn't let a ball past him all year. Granted, no balls have been hit to him this year, but that's neither here nor there.
Next up, at the plate. Notice the bent knees, with the elbow up. That's pretty good form for a beginner (his Dad…
May 7, 2007
The story of research on linguistic relativity can be summarized thusly: early cognitive scientists, inspired by the work of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, were all-too eager to find that thought is influenced, if not determined, by language (either by its grammatical categories, ala Whorf, or by…
May 2, 2007
Even though study after study has shown that implicit race bias is pretty much ubiquitous in American society, I'm still occasionally surprised when a study comes out demonstrating it in an area I hadn't previously thought about. That was the case when a friend emailed me a New York Times article…
May 1, 2007
Jeremy Dean of PsyBlog is doing another online study, this time on emotions, and he needs participants. So if you have about 10 minutes, and you'd like to participate in some real live research, click here and follow his instructions.
April 25, 2007
In case you haven't heard about it already, fellow ScienceBlogger and neuroblogger Shelley has been threatened by lawyers for using images from a journal article in her blog posts. Now, I do this all the time (check two posts back), because the whole point of posting about research is so that…
April 24, 2007
As Trinifar says, we're witnessing a great atheist schism. While there are actually several different types of atheists participating (I wonder if we're just playing into the hands of anti-atheist rhetoric by pretending we are, or should be, a homogenous group), the tendency is to classify the…
April 23, 2007
Have you ever read about a study, perhaps on this blog even, and thought to yourself, "Well those results are interesting in the lab, but they have absolutely no implications for life outside of the lab?" I remember quite clearly thinking exactly that when I was told about the name-letter effect…
April 22, 2007
Below is the text of a post I wrote for the old blog back in March of '06. I'm putting it here now because, given the discussion of the new atheist-suffragist analogy, I think it will provide some much needed perspective. In the article below, you will see just what the women's rights movement was…