In 1930 Bertrand Russell published a book that he hoped would “suggest a cure for the ordinary day-to-day unhappiness from which most people in civilized countries suffer.” Whether we still suffer in the same ways…
Category: <span>Philosophy</span>
Do you know someone that displays the shovel-like tendency to dig themselves into a hole? Some people have easy-to-find similarities, but what tool would we use to represent the whole human race? The question was asked of behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely, author of…
Neuroscientist David Eagleman has popularized an alternative view regarding religious views, and he’s labeled it ‘possibilianism.’ The goal of possibilianism is to discourage certainty. Eagleman uses the example of space, in which even in a tiny dark…
It’s common to think of our senses as separate. Sight is sight, we can clearly differentiate it from sound. It turns out our senses like to communicate and influence each other. Our conscious experience is…
What do your tweets, Facebook updates, blog posts or other written media say about you? You might be able to find out, as IBM’s supercomputer, Watson, learns the ropes of psychoanalysis. Your personality is plastered all over…
We see distinct colors in the spectrum, but their boundaries are impossible to measure precisely. — Adam Alter In Drunk Tank Pink, Adam Alter points out that the labels we use in our respective languages influence the…
There are many decisions we make in split seconds. Decisions that require no cognitive effort, no thought, no awareness. Where does the observation that you like this piece of music come from? How long did…
“… we are constantly predicting the future and hypothesizing what we will experience. This expectation influences what we actually perceive. Predicting the future is actually the primary reason that we have a brain.” Ray Kurzweil is…
A few years ago I studied a philosophy paper online, through Massey University in New Zealand. It was great, in it I got my first experience of the mind-body problem — are they one and…