Philosophy posts
- February 4, 2011
- 04:03 PM
- 628 views
Touching Death
by Eric Michael Johnson in The Primate Diaries in Exile
The latest stop in the #PDEx tour is being hosted by The Prancing Papio:There is something intensely animal about our relationship with the dead. As an atheist I don’t feel particular reverence or awe at the site of a cadaver. It mostly just creeps me out. But even religious believers, those who should be comfortable with the idea that a dead body retains no trace of the person they once knew, also seem to have trouble letting go of what St. Paul called “confidence in the flesh.” In funera........ Read more »
Cronin, K., van Leeuwen, E., Mulenga, I., & Bodamer, M. (2011) Behavioral response of a chimpanzee mother toward her dead infant. American Journal of Primatology. DOI: 10.1002/ajp.20927
- February 4, 2011
- 04:03 PM
- 598 views
Touching Death
by Eric Michael Johnson in The Primate Diaries
The latest stop in the #PDEx tour is being hosted by The Prancing Papio:There is something intensely animal about our relationship with the dead. As an atheist I don’t feel particular reverence or awe at the site of a cadaver. It mostly just creeps me out. But even religious believers, those who should be comfortable with the idea that a dead body retains no trace of the person they once knew, also seem to have trouble letting go of what St. Paul called “confidence in the flesh.” In funera........ Read more »
Cronin, K., van Leeuwen, E., Mulenga, I., & Bodamer, M. (2011) Behavioral response of a chimpanzee mother toward her dead infant. American Journal of Primatology. DOI: 10.1002/ajp.20927
- February 4, 2011
- 06:10 AM
- 693 views
Cultivated penguins
by Jörg Friedrich in Reading Nature
For decades, scientists mark animals in the wild in order to recognize and thus be able to observe the same individuals for a long time. They believe that they find out something about the nature by watching marked animals, but … Continue reading →... Read more »
Saraux C, Le Bohec C, Durant JM, Viblanc VA, Gauthier-Clerc M, Beaune D, Park YH, Yoccoz NG, Stenseth NC, & Le Maho Y. (2011) Reliability of flipper-banded penguins as indicators of climate change. Nature, 469(7329), 203-6. PMID: 21228875
- February 2, 2011
- 02:08 AM
- 628 views
Divergence and gene flow – what is a paleogenetic model
by Jörg Friedrich in Reading Nature
With the technical advances in gene sequencing, the possibilities of their use are growing rapidly. Totally new scientific disciplines evolve – eg the paleogenetics. Gene sequences are produced from bones thousands of years old, and these are compared with each … Continue reading →... Read more »
Reich D, Green RE, Kircher M, Krause J, Patterson N, Durand EY, Viola B, Briggs AW, Stenzel U, Johnson PL.... (2010) Genetic history of an archaic hominin group from Denisova Cave in Siberia. Nature, 468(7327), 1053-60. PMID: 21179161
- January 28, 2011
- 09:58 AM
- 1,123 views
STS-51L Challenger Tragedy | 25 Years Today
by Michael Lombardi in a New Life in the Sea
Twenty-five years ago this very morning (at age 6) I was sitting on a tile floor in the hallway of Martin Elementary School in Seekonk, Massachusetts watching history unfold in real-time. This school assembly followed a series of classroom lessons about space - our solar system, the moon, and exploration.
As the world turns, it often takes tragedy to so well ingrain lessons to be learned, and this case was no exception. As I sat there with three classrooms worth of schoolmates, I watc........ Read more »
Steven J. Dick and Keith Cowing. (2008) Proceedings from the NASA Administrator's Symposium Risk and Exploration: Earth, Sea and the Stars. NASA SP-2005-4701. DOI: NASA SP-2005-4701
- January 21, 2011
- 01:41 PM
- 892 views
Mind perception of others: opposing effects of having Autism/Psychosis
by sandygautam in The Mouse Trap
Image via Wikipedia It has been this blog’s thesis that autism and its milder form autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are diametrically opposed to psychosis and its milder form schizotypy. In no area is this more apparent than in the perception or attribution of minds to others. It thus gave me immense pleasure to read thisRating: 0.0/10 (0 votes cast)... Read more »
Gray, K., Jenkins, A., Heberlein, A., & Wegner, D. (2010) Distortions of mind perception in psychopathology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(2), 477-479. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1015493108
- January 18, 2011
- 07:08 PM
- 917 views
"Perceptions of Promise: Biology, Society, Art" Explores the Social Dimensions of Life Science Technologies
by Matthew C. Nisbet in Age of Engagement
Despite the important role of the arts in enabling public expression, learning, and participation relative to science, there is an unfortunate tendency to think about the relationship in terms of "two cultures" divided. This metaphor has come to dominate discourse about science and society more ...Read More... Read more »
Nisbet, M., Hixon, M., Moore, K., & Nelson, M. (2010) Four cultures: new synergies for engaging society on climate change. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 8(6), 329-331. DOI: 10.1890/1540-9295-8.6.329
- January 14, 2011
- 11:05 AM
- 611 views
Dangerous Science?
by Jörg Friedrich in Reading Nature
These days the year of chemistry begins, and this is nature in the first issue from 06/01/2011 a number of contributions worth. For me the contribution of the chemist David Nichols on page 7 was of special interest. Nichols looks … Continue reading →... Read more »
Nichols D. (2011) Legal highs: the dark side of medicinal chemistry. Nature, 469(7328), 7. PMID: 21209630
- January 10, 2011
- 10:55 PM
- 854 views
Epistemic opacity in simulations
by Ponder Stibbons in The truth makes me fret.
This post is the result of reading Wittgenstein and the philosophy of simulation literature in close temporal proximity. Here is Paul Humphreys on epistemic opacity in computer simulations: a process is epistemically opaque relative to a cognitive agent X at time t just in case X does not know at t all of the epistemically [...]... Read more »
Humphreys, P. (2008) The philosophical novelty of computer simulation methods. Synthese, 169(3), 615-626. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-008-9435-2
- January 1, 2011
- 08:35 PM
- 853 views
Study: Sugar Pills Heal People Who Believe They Will Work
by David Berreby in Mind Matters
In a technology-based culture, you learn from infancy that truth is what can be counted and measured. That makes it easy to divide any conversation into what you learned (important!) and how you learned it (immaterial). What your medical tests reveal is vital; how your doctor tells you, her "bedside ...Read More
... Read more »
Kaptchuk, T., Friedlander, E., Kelley, J., Sanchez, M., Kokkotou, E., Singer, J., Kowalczykowski, M., Miller, F., Kirsch, I., & Lembo, A. (2010) Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome. PLoS ONE, 5(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0015591
- December 29, 2010
- 04:03 PM
- 953 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
... Read more »
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 28, 2010
- 12:31 PM
- 776 views
A new Kind of “Intelligent Design”?
by Jörg Friedrich in Reading Nature
Before Galileo and Newton, the subject of physics was what has been found in nature, after them the object of investigation is more and more what the researchers have created in the laboratory. Previously physics described what is being, after … Continue reading →... Read more »
Elowitz M, & Lim WA. (2010) Build life to understand it. Nature, 468(7326), 889-90. PMID: 21164460
- December 28, 2010
- 06:00 AM
- 726 views
When Is A Placebo Not A Placebo?
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Irving Kirsch, best known for that 2008 meta-analysis allegedly showing that "Prozac doesn't work", has hit the headlines again.This time it's a paper claiming that something does work. Actually Kirsch is only a minor author on the paper by Kaptchuck et al: Placebos without Deception.In essence, they asked whether a placebo treatment - a dummy pill with no active ingredients - works even if you know that it's a placebo. Conventional wisdom would say no, because the placebo effect is driven by th........ Read more »
Kaptchuk, T., Friedlander, E., Kelley, J., Sanchez, M., Kokkotou, E., Singer, J., Kowalczykowski, M., Miller, F., Kirsch, I., & Lembo, A. (2010) Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome. PLoS ONE, 5(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0015591
- December 27, 2010
- 10:51 PM
- 1,519 views
Meme Theory Today (NSFW)
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
A look at how meme theory can explain the wide spread misquotation of it's own "inventor" Richard Dawkins.... Read more »
Dawkins, R. (1979) The selfish gene By Richard Dawkins (1977). Oxford University Press. . Journal of Human Evolution, 8(6), 647-648. DOI: 10.1016/0047-2484(79)90117-9
- December 24, 2010
- 06:15 AM
- 757 views
Dark energy as theoretical entity
by Jörg Friedrich in Reading Nature
Dark matter and dark energy are typical examples of what is known in the philosophy of science as “theoretical entity”: elements of theories, whose existence is hypothesized and their assumed properties and behaviours can be used for explanation of the … Continue reading →... Read more »
Marinoni C, & Buzzi A. (2010) A geometric measure of dark energy with pairs of galaxies. Nature, 468(7323), 539-41. PMID: 21107424
- December 23, 2010
- 09:08 PM
- 920 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
... Read more »
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 22, 2010
- 09:43 PM
- 523 views
Bad Metaphors Make for Bad Theories
by melodye in Child's Play
Imagine for a moment, that you have been thrown back into the Ellisonesque world of the 1980’s, with a delightful perm and even better trousers. One fragile Monday morning, you are sitting innocently enough at your cubicle, when your boss comes to you with the summary of a report you have never read, on a [...]... Read more »
Ramscar, M.,, Yarlett, D.,, Dye, M.,, Denny, K.,, & Thorpe, K. (2010) The Effects of Feature-Label-Order and their implications for symbolic learning. Cognitive Science, 34(6), 909-957. info:/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01092.x
- December 17, 2010
- 04:57 PM
- 794 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
... Read more »
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
- December 15, 2010
- 02:35 PM
- 680 views
Towards a scientific concept of free will
by Björn Brembs in bjoern.brembs.blog
Today, the Royal Society published my article reviewing the invertebrate data supporting a scientific concept of free will. In it, I first reiterate that the metaphysical concept of free will is long dead (since the 1970s). Then I emphasize that determinism has been dead for even longer (basically since quantum mechanics). Finally, I propose that the ability to behave differently in identical circumstances forms the basis for a scientific concept of free will. Basically, IMHO, free will is a bi........ Read more »
Björn Brembs. (2010) Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates. Proc. R. Soc. B. info:/
- December 15, 2010
- 02:37 AM
- 780 views
We really do believe we’ve got more free will than the other guy.
by Scicurious in Neurotic Physiology
I tweeted this link all over the internets the other day, and not surprisingly, it got picked up a lot. And why not? Free will is one of those subjects that is particularly interesting to, well, just about everyone. It’s one the deep philosophical questions pondered by philosophers, and high people everywhere: DO we really [...]... Read more »
Pronin, E., & Kugler, M. (2010) People believe they have more free will than others. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1012046108
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