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Category: cognition

Hanzi Freinacht on Nordic Ideology

Hanzi Freinacht on Nordic Ideology

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We’ve briefly discussed metamodernism before. Hanzi has written two books on the subject. In this interview he discusses his latest book Nordic Ideology. There’s also a transcript available if you prefer reading. The blurb: “Hanzi Freinacht, political philosopher, historian, sociologist, & author talks with Jim about effective value memes, cultural code, what it means to have high depth, dynamics of cognitive complexity, the changeability of culture & systems, social engineering, compulsion vs seduction, prioritizing subjective states, cultural attractor points &…

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Education In A Time Between Worlds

Education In A Time Between Worlds

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Is the title of a new book (2019) by Zak Stein, subtitled: Essays on the Future of Schools, Technology and Society. You can see the table of contents here. I provide this book to satisfy Mark’s latest email on branching out to topics that provide positive visions and/or means for healthy societal change. It would be a good book for us to read and discuss. It’s not available in the Abq. public library, so perhaps someone with university inter-library loan…

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The psychology of rituals

The psychology of rituals

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Subtitle: An integrative review and process-based framework, by Hobson et al. (2018), Personality and Social Psychology Review 22(3). The abstract: “Traditionally, ritual has been studied from broad sociocultural perspectives, with little consideration of the psychological processes at play. Recently, however, psychologists have begun turning their attention to the study of ritual, uncovering the causal mechanisms driving this universal aspect of human behavior. With growing interest in the psychology of ritual, this article provides an organizing framework to understand recent empirical…

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Partisan Innumeracy

Partisan Innumeracy

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In his memoir, China in Ten Words, writer Yu Hua recalled an event following the end of the cultural revolution. Literature had been banned for many years but the memory of its joys had lingered in much of the population. Hua’s formative years had been during the intellectually desiccated period. Emerging from a time when being seen with any book other than officially sanctioned volumes of or about Chairman Mao could have grave consequences, he and many others craved stories…

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The geometry of space

The geometry of space

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Following up on this cogsci article, this new article in Nautilus supports the previous work about how spatial motor schemas extend into abstract conceptual mapping. Excerpts: “We, unlike our computers, represent information in geometrical space.[…] The brain represents concepts in the same way that it represents space and your location, by using the same neural circuitry for the brain’s ‘inner GPS.’ […] The hippocampus’ place and grid cells, in other words, map not only physical space but conceptual space. It…

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General and specific-domain contributions to creativity

General and specific-domain contributions to creativity

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From this article in Europe’s Journal of Psychology (2016). “The general objective of this study was to reexamine two views of creativity, one positing that there is a general creative capacity or talent and the other that creativity is domain-specific.  […] Multiple regressions uncovered particular relationships consistent with the view that creativity has both general and domain-specific contributions. Limitations, such as the focus on one domain, and future directions are discussed.” Also see comments.

What is Lost During Online Meetings?

What is Lost During Online Meetings?

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Norm Friesen, Professor of Educational Technology at Boise State University reports on his research into the differences in how we experience web-based versus face-to-face (F2F) meetings. The main finding are Lack of eye contact Looking askance Feeling watched Squelching / talking over others Each of these factors results from limitations imposed by communications technologies. We manage to work with or around them but they can contribute to a sense of web-based meetings being somehow not-quite-right or not as comfortable as…

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A war broke out in heaven

A war broke out in heaven

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See Zak Stein’s reflections on how the pandemic signals the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. This could be an opportunity to transform our dominant cultural worldview if we but accept the responsibility and get busy enacting it. Just a brief excerpt follows. Click on the link and be rewarded with the rest of this inspiring scripture. “One world is now gone and a new one has yet to emerge; we are now at the…

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Dual-System theory and the role of consciousness in intentional action

Dual-System theory and the role of consciousness in intentional action

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Book chapter by Marcus Schlosser in Free Will, Causality and Neuroscience (2020). From the Introduction: “I will propose a revised version of the standard view according to which automatic action (or so-called automatic goal pursuit) can qualify as derivatively intentional if it has appropriate history of habit formation” (36).

Consciousness goes deeper than you think

Consciousness goes deeper than you think

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We’ve investigated Damasio‘s various forms of consciousness, from proto to core to narrative, as well as Dehaene‘s 2 forms. This Scientific American article reiterates at least the 2 different kinds. “Jonathan Schooler has established a clear distinction between conscious and meta-conscious processes. Whereas both types entail the qualities of experience, meta-conscious processes also entail what he called re-representation. […] Attention plays an important role is in re-representation; that is, the conscious knowledge of an experience, which underlies introspection. Subjects cannot…

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