Archive for the ‘psychology’ Category

A movie with its heart in the right place, but…

…to be honest I haven’t seen Being In The World yet (it doesn’t seem to have been released), so what follows is based on the website, but there are enough trailers, clips and text there to get me thinking. Being In The World is a new movie by Tao Ruspoli, and, as is common these [...]

March 30, 2010   Posted in: AI, philosophy, psychology  No Comments

Effects of media violence ignored by media?

I’ve been reading a paper by Susan Hurley (@Wikipedia), a philosopher who sadly died a couple of years ago aged only 53, for a university course. The title is “By-passing conscious control: imitation, media violence and freedom of speech.” (In S Pockett et al, Does Consciousness Cause Behaviour, MIT Press. I might be doing an [...]

February 16, 2010   Posted in: philosophy, politics, psychology  No Comments

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow

I discovered this while working on my PhD research proposal (which at the moment is on again, though maybe not for long). I’m interested in the implications of altered states such as flow for philosophy of mind. But you don’t need to be a philosopher or psychologist to learn a lot from this. Some of [...]

January 30, 2010   Posted in: philosophy, psychology  No Comments

Empathy with robots

This is a fascinating, if short, article in New Scientist magazine. Exposure to robots in the movies and television could affect our ability to empathise with synthetic beings, suggests a study of the brain regions thought to be responsible for our ability to relate to each other. The team found that the MNS [mirror neuron [...]

January 22, 2010   Posted in: pro-social, psychology  No Comments

Daniel Goleman on compassion

As a follow-up to the last message, here’s a TED video of Daniel Goleman speaking on compassion. This is pro-social science—very nice!

January 16, 2010   Posted in: pro-social, psychology  2 Comments

Don’t Rage Against the Machine

It’s generally futile if not destructive and here’s why… What, exactly, is this “machine”? A few minutes spent studying the politics of the group who took the coveted Christmas Number One slot in the UK Singles Chart in 2009 (see Rage Against the Machine on Wikipedia) makes it clear that what they’re against is the [...]

January 16, 2010   Posted in: politics, pro-social  No Comments

VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization

VS Ramachandran: The neurons that shaped civilization http://tinyurl.com/yceysmc Neuroscience, culture, empathy, eastern philosophy, etc, etc. All in about seven minutes. Amazing.

January 6, 2010   Posted in: philosophy, psychology  No Comments