- Essentialism about social concepts
- Motivated cognition outside of politics
- Cultural differences in cognition
- Memetics
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Upcoming on Mixing Memory
I've got a few posts stewing on the following topics:
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15 comments:
i'm excited for the memetics post myself... whenever dennett gets talking about ideas working like viruses (or symbiotes), some red flag gets waved in my head. I'd love to see your take.
I would like to see a little bit regarding concept stability and publicity and how, if concepts are relatively public, they cannot, according to you, take on a semi-autonomous existence akin to what to Dennett's semantic memetics.
jeff, that's actually along the lines of the criticism I was planning on discussing in the post, so that should work out nicely. Might also provide for some interesting discussion.
Chris,
I would be really interested in hearing your take on cultural differences in cognition, especially given most of the research that I've seen tends to view cognitive processes as universal to humans. Of course, the other topics are also quite fascinating. Keep up the great blogging...
I'm particularly interested in cognition on moral issues-- how/when moral reasoning takes place, etc.
Also everything theory of mind-- the dispute between theory theory and simulation, cognitive and affective empathy, things of that nature.
That said, I really appreciate your blog; it's chock full of interesting stuff every time I check. Thanks.
Memetics as an idea interests me, but I don't know much about it other than what little I've read in Dawkins and Blackmore. I'd love to hear your take on it.
Anon (one of you),
I've got three long (too long) posts on moral cog (here, here, and here). There may be more coming, but since it's such a difficult topic to write on, it might be a while. Those should keep you busy for a while, though.
Theory-theory vs. simulation is a great topic. I've thought about posting on it before, but I was afraid it might be a little too... technical. But if you're interested, someone else probably is as well.
Todd, I've posted on cultural differences once before (I think only once). The next post will be on some specific work. Are there any aspects of the cultural difference stuff that you'd be interested in hearing about in particular?
chris - great blog as always. I'm curious about theory-theory; I don't really understand what that's all about.
michael - there's a great paper in today's issue of nature describing the relationship of structural change to IQ, by Shaw et al. check it out...
Michael, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "correlations between brain structure and intelligence." I saw that they've recently found some relationship between IQ and patterns in brain development, but I haven't yet read the research. Is that what you're thinking of? Oh wait, as soon as I typed that, I see that Chris Chatham has already mentioned it.
Chris C., theory-theory it is. Actually, the debate between the theory-theory people and the simulation people is pretty interesting, because it's part of a much larger debate about the nature of representation (symbolic vs. embodied, or symbolic vs. "modal"). The larger debate could, when all's said and done, have enormous consequences (or it could turn out, like the images vs. propositions debate of the 70s, to be irrelevant), but the theory-theory vs. simulation debate will definitely have consequences for how we understand other minds.
hey, that sounds great. a post about theory-theory would be awesome. i'm all about the big debates :)
Can I chime in with a vote for the theory-theory since it sounds interesting and I know nothing? Does this relate to how we represent abstract concepts (like mathematics)?
math, yes, it relates to how we representa many, if not all concepts.
Would be interested to hear your take on the perceptual vs amodal accouts of concepts...I remember you trashing Prinz's book but not explaining why...
anon, I wrote a long post criticizing Barsalou's perceptual symbol systems way back when. I'll try to find the post, later. Since Prinz' theory is basically Barsalou's with some philosophical trimmings, any criticism of Barsalou's will likely be a criticism of Prinz'. There are others (e.g., his deciderata are misguided, to an extent), though. I'll see if I can turn them into a post.
Yep, Prinz was a student of Barsalou's. I recall his deciderata stemmed (in part) from what a philosopher would need to explain, rather than a psychologist.
I tried to find your Barsalou post but to no avail, and the serach facility doesn't work, so if you could put in a link that would be nice.
I am interested in simulationist accounts of cognition (and not just as an alternative to theory-theory) so would put in a vote for that.
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