(Part 2) Best cognitive psychology books according to redditors
We found 477 Reddit comments discussing the best cognitive psychology books. We ranked the 183 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
https://www.amazon.com/Measured-Lies-Bell-Curve-Examined/dp/0312172281
https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Genes-Success-Scientists-Statistics/dp/0387949860
https://www.amazon.com/Inequality-Design-Cracking-Bell-Curve/dp/0691028982
https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Debate-Russell-Jacoby/dp/0812925874
https://www.amazon.com/Bell-Curve-Wars-Intelligence-Republic/dp/0465006930
There are a few titles I really love. I hope you like a few things on the list, if you have any questions let me know.
Your time may have been better spent delving into the science of human memory, in particular the work of Dr. Julia Shaw. I could see how some might think this train station nonsense counts as a glaring inconsistency or anomaly in James’s account, but in light of what we know about how memory works, it really isn’t. It’s likely we’re all walking around with memories — even vivid memories — that are substantially inaccurate, especially from the events of our childhood. Yet most of us don’t have an army of amateur sleuths who are willing to pull up decades-old construction permits in order to verify just how faulty our memories are; that is the only thing that’s strange about Safechuck’s memory vis-a-vis the train station.
The resistance to this idea is understandable. We’re probably hard-wired to have misplaced faith in the accuracy of our own memories. So much of how we get along in life, after all, seems premised on the reasonable reliability of our own capacity to remember. Yet all the psychological research shows that reasonable reliability is actually far less reliable than we suppose. It’s not the first time science has undermined our common-sense assumptions.
With regard to James, he seems to have clearly forgotten that the Disneyland train station was built very late in his relationship with MJ. After all, if he clearly and vividly remembered the train station suddenly appearing when he was almost 16 years old, and he were setting out to fabricate a story about abuse between 10-12, he certainly wouldn’t have included the train station in his fabrication. He would know that it would be fact-checked sooner or later. That’s one indication that we’re dealing with faulty memory and not deception.
Keep in mind, too, that James was essentially tasking himself with recalling multiple sexual acts (traumatic ones at that) which took place over the course of several months or years, and on an enormous property that was constantly undergoing change as new structures were being added. Within that gigantic blur — a time in his life he surely worked to suppress — it’s completely understandable that some of his memories would be substantially inaccurate; indeed, based on what we know about how memory functions, that is to be expected.
It bears mentioning again: everything about this case points to the conclusion that Michael Jackson abused these boys. This train station stuff is not an exception.
EDIT: I should add that “false memory” doesn’t imply that the entirety of the abusive relationship was somehow suppressed, only to be recovered late in life. If one has been sexually molested, that is not something one would forget, though the details may be altered by memory.
I've got just the book for you!
But seriously, try Nengo a bit. Spaun is pretty decent.
Unconscious and subliminal are not the same thing. Priming can be supraliminal (physically visable/audible) and still unconscious (causing behavior that were not of conscious volition).
For an example, see: http://171.66.127.192/content/2/3/412.full
For a review (targeted at laypeople) of prior work in the field, see: http://www.amazon.com/The-Hidden-Brain-Unconscious-Presidents/dp/B007K4F7RU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333909891&sr=8-1
Yes. Their core drivers are remarkably different.
https://www.amazon.ca/Moral-Politics-Liberals-Conservatives-Think/dp/022641129X/ref=asc_df_022641129X/?tag=googlemobshop-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=296007343627&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13203732789082959761&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9000914&hvtargid=pla-489186824873&psc=1
I'm 55% of the way through Moral Politics right now and finding it excellent. That's kind of what it says. What it really does is claim that both liberals and conservatives in the USA are basing their politics on deep morals, but it links those moral systems to the way that we raise our families. Basically, we use the metaphor of the nation as a family and the government as its parents, so our moral positions tend to be the same for both.
Apart from making an excellent and persuasive case, the author also goes on to conclude that, in his opinion at least, the conservative approach to both raising a family and governing a nation is terribly flawed. The book was written in 1996, and seems completely relevant to today. I highly recommend it. I also heard about it from a reddit comment, so, I guess I'm trying to keep that going.
If I still had my copy of this book from the sociology class I took in college I would send it to you so you can allow them to touch and then watch the resulting matter-antimatter annihilation reaction: http://www.amazon.com/Inequality-Design-Cracking-Bell-Curve/dp/0691028982/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334789710&sr=1-10
The Ego Tunnel by Metzinger
Consciousness and the Brain by Dahaene
Self Comes to Mind by Damasio
Consciousness and the Social Brain by Graziano
>One might ask, "but are you not assuming the existence of lan- guage. Therefore the whole theory rests on this assumption making it axiomatic?". To which I would answer that since a language is required to formulate that question, the question is self-defeating.
In fact any written, spoken or sign-based counter argument to the existence of language would have to use language and would be self- defeating. Hence, the existence of language is immune against all language-based counter-arguments.
This is too quick. I can understand and communicate an objection through language, but that doesn't mean the objection is self-defeating, even though the objection is self-referential in some sense. The objection in fact seems well founded to me, you are indeed relying on axiom-like conceptions rooted in language throughout your exposition about what constitutes primitive notions, primitive theories, primitive predicates, laws of unrestricted semantics, and so on.
Edit: This project, even if it were successfully argued, overstates it's achievement. It may be that the universe is informational in nature (you might be interested in Floridi's Philosophy of Information), but this is a major claim to be defended, and is exactly the issue at stake if you want to say that all physical phenomena can be represented by a number together with some unspecified set of rules of inference. If the universe is informational, then the fact that the universe can be represented as information is a trivial tautological corollary -- that is exactly what it means to say the universe is informational! It is not particularly interesting to specify exactly how we might represent the information content -- I imagine there are many ways of doing this. It's also unclear what is meant to be achieved by making your digitalization system 'axiomless' -- you certainly aren't going to be able to escape the concerns over naive foundationalism simply because you avoid the word 'axiom' in your ontology.
This is a nice place to start. Here is another free online asset.
MATLAB for Neuroscientists will probably come in handy.
Theoretical Neuroscience is a classic.
Then we have Fundamentals of Computational Neuroscience.
I'd be interested in working through some stuff. However, I strongly recommend against that textbook unless you are far more mathematically inclined than biologically inclined. A book I regularly hear is better is https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Computational-Neuroscience-Thomas-Trappenberg-ebook/dp/B00F1D7K90/ref=pd_sim_351_5/142-8547797-4404628?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00F1D7K90&pd_rd_r=94bccf74-72a6-11e9-a70e-fdfd69152f1b&pd_rd_w=BAcvA&pd_rd_wg=OSgsO&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=P95Z6WQ78BG4FXFDSHPC&psc=1&refRID=P95Z6WQ78BG4FXFDSHPC
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I have it and find it far more approachable, and thoughtfully put together. I took a class with Abbott and he himself didn't seem to think particularly highly of the text.
Depends on the level at which you are looking. Cellular stuff? Signal processing and calculus. Population dynamics? Linear algebra and calculus. Brain regions/networks/whole brain? Graph theory and linear algebra.
And for all of them, statistics will be the tool to understand what's happening within the mathematical formulations.
On side note: if you're looking at the level of behavior, many other discrete methods become much more important in my opinion. However, it is fairly uncommon for people to use a behavioral approach these days without linking it to some other measurement one of the levels I mentioned before.
See From Neuron to Cognition, Fundamentals of Computational Neuroscience, and Theoretical Neuroscience for some foundational understanding.
>I think I heard they’re doing another season
Fantastic.
A good follow-up read on the problems of memory & false confessions is The Memory Illusion by Julia Shaw.
Dennett, Carruthers, Ned Block, Paul Churchland and others have all offered more or less naturalistically acceptable accounts of first-personal conscious experience, so it's probably not the case that the received view among contemporary researchers is that consciousness is magic.
You're fighting a hard fight. I'm there myself, and I've been through years and years of trying to find something that helps. For me, personally, learning the science of my screwed up brain chemistry, psychology, etc. has been important in accepting how it is, and seeing that it's not my weakness or otherwise. Try Viktor Frankl for psychology (and beautiful but horrific stories) and Human for some amazing insights on neuroscience.
Also, I learned this the hard way: A therapist that doesn't help you should be dumped ASAP. If there's no progress in the course of weeks or months, or if you don't find a connection, chances are it will never be. My current therapist is a freaking genius and gives me epiphanies about myself almost every session. He's expensive as all hell but worth every cent.
I agree with your view on SSRIs, mostly. I despise them, and do not advocate their widespread and long-term use, but I see them as a short-term tool for getting your head above the water. Combined with good therapy, they can do good things if used right.
Finally: Don't get hung up in trying to find out what's wrong, but I do advocate exploration. For instance, a doctor recently took some tests and suggested to me that I might lack vitamin B and/or Q10 uptake, being at least partially responsible for my lack of energy, and told me to supplement some heavy doses to see if it helped. It did, and it gives me more room to work with the rest.
Good doctors and therapists are worth their weight in gold. Try to find them.
(Also, following pt. 6, I do not subscribe to /r/depression, but jump in seldomly.)
Here's a link for Grant's. It's what we used as well: http://www.amazon.com/Grants-Dissector-Tank-15th/dp/1609136063
That book and those studies have been debunked so fucking hard over the years for having a cultural bias i cant believe you are actually citing it here. The tests would show people at tennis courts with pictures of A.) Tennis Rackets B.) Basketball C.) Baseball bat and ask which belongs. Obviously a middle class white kid will know to choose A. but what does a poor black kid who has never seen a tennis court choose.
Shit science from a shit scientist.
> Is my mind, my perception, my consciousness, an idea that is shared, somehow, across my cells, my neurons, the subunits of which my body consists?
See, the thing is, why stop at cells? Each "subunit" could be further divided into more subunits: cells into molecules, moleculs into atoms, atoms into protons, neutrons and electrons, and then quarks and on and on until you reach the fundamental level of reality, whichever that is... Let's say the fundamental level is "vibrating strings", as in string-theory. Well, if you could see reality at the "string-level", what would you see? Would you still see people, for instance? Would you even see rocks and mountains? I don't think so. "Our" reality is not absolute reality (provided absolute reality exists), and even the most tangible and simplest objects you can think of are really more in our head than "out there". And of all the things that make up reality, consciosness is probably the trickiest object to pin down. Some thinkers (like british philosopher Colin McGinn) believe our minds aren't powerful enough to ever understand conscousness.
I'm not sure, but still... good luck finding the answer!
As for readings, the idea of how mind and consciousness emerge from simpler subunits has notably been explored by Hofstadter. Try I am a Strange Loop
>First, morality is primarily cultural rather than biological.
No it's not. Unfortunately this idea has been promoted by incredibly sloppy academics and pseudo-philosophers.
Fortunately people like Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Andy Thompson and many other very intelligent people are starting to show that it is not true that morality is primarily cultural. It is primarily biological.
Our morality has evolved, we share a common evolutionary history and a commonly evolved moral sense.
A book on this topic that I've heard is good, though I'm yet to read it, is moral minds which looks at the evolution of morality.
http://nengo.ca/build-a-brain
http://nengo.ca/build-a-brain/spaunvideos
http://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Brain-Architecture-Architectures/dp/0199794545
http://ironshrink.com/2007/12/what-is-relational-frame-theory-part-one/ is probably the best 'simple' introduction on the web today. the link at the bottom of the page for part two is broken so use this instead: http://ironshrink.com/2008/02/what-is-relational-frame-theory-part-two/
Most of the rest of it is highly academic. http://www.amazon.com/Relational-Frame-Theory-Post-Skinnerian-Cognition/dp/0306466007 is the original statement of the theory intended for professional researchers and clinicians. Very dense with jargon and assumes a high level of familiarity with existing learning theory concepts, much of which is derived from Skinner. http://www.amazon.com/Learning-RFT-Introduction-Relational-Application/dp/1572249064/ref=pd_sim_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1CFS9M89Y6BZG10DGT36 is intended to be more of an introduction to RFT, but having read it, I think it is still dense. being translated from Swedish into English doesn't help.
the core idea in RFT is the observation that while both a dog and a human can learn that "cookie" refers to those delicious little things you put in your mouth, only humans will also learn that those delicious things are named "cookie". If you show a cookie to a human, she will say "that's a cookie" before trying to eat it, while a dog will just try to eat it. This is not just a problem with dog's speech production mechanics. they simply do not make the backwards association.
the backwards association, called a derived relation if I remember correctly, is important, because it underlies the ability of symbols - mere noise and sensation in our heads - to take on the rewarding and punishing properties of actual experience with the world. This sort of learning underlies how a thought concerning a possible danger in the future can get us acting afraid right now. Of course it's more complicated than that but I think that is the central idea.
The thing that is most cool about this is that there is a great deal of research supporting the explanatory power of RFT - from rat labs up to human beings. RFT marks the first time I'm aware of that we have a wholistic theory of learning that is useful for explaining both animal behavior and the human sense of self; not in terms of where it comes from, but in terms of how it behaves.
Philosophy in the Flesh by Lakoff and Johnson
I Am A Strange Loop by Hofstadter
http://www.amazon.com/Human-Science-Behind-Makes-Unique/dp/0060892897/
>You either have govt enforce the rules or some warlord.
Warlords aren't much concerned with the cannabis trade these days. Gangs either. There is much greater profit to be made with the harder drugs.
I have friends who've worked the cannabis fields in northern California. These guys aren't hardened criminals. They like pot, they grow pot, they sell pot. That's it. No force, no coercion, no murder or theft involved. They hire their friends to help with the harvest and they pay them very well. People don't need external rules to guide their economic behavior and they certainly don't need to be forced to be good. Morality is in our very Nature. We are social beings.
Loving the feedback--thank you! I've also found a couple of highly rated books regarding observations on cetacean intelligence and social structure:
Cetacean Societies: Field Studies of Dolphins and Whales https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226503410/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Za1YxbZZHJTBV
The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins https://www.amazon.com/dp/022632592X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Kf1YxbNSC7VFD
For information on the biology of consciousness, I would recommend the books and lectures of Daniel Dennett, in particular Consciousness Explained.
You have the burden of proof to show that there is anything other than the physical body in a physical body.
most philosophers of mind are physicalists:
Accept or lean toward: physicalism 526 / 931 (56.4%)
Accept or lean toward: non-physicalism 252 / 931 (27%)
Other 153 / 931 (16.4%)
Most continental philosophers of mind are non-physicalists.
For reductive physicalism, the strongest work is typically taken to be Kim's, which the following monograph by him lays out well: http://www.amazon.com/Physicalism-Something-Princeton-Monographs-Philosophy/dp/0691113750
Against reductionism, the strongest work is typically taken to be on Multiple Realizability, which started with Putnam. You may want to check out his Representation and Reality.
Don't bother, you'll get enough of it in med school haha.
As far as I know, one of the gold standards for anatomy is the Frank H Netter material. There's a nice Atlas of Human Anatomy (keep in mind an atlas usually doesn't have information about the functions of any anatomy, just the names), and study cards (even referenced here).
Gray's Anatomy is good (obviously), but really long. The student's version may be shorter/more manageable.
My undergrad class used Grant's Atlas of Anatomy/Grant's Dissector, and a Human Anatomy textbook. They were not bad as well. Anatomy material is always pretty dry.
If you can, maybe see what your school uses? That way you won't start reading and then have to switch to a different book (though I suppose extra reading is never a bad thing).
And congrats again on getting into med school!
You can solve that problem by getting Critical Thinking for Dummies out of your local library, or by purchasing it off of Amazon. To paraphrase Tim Minchin, there are, as matter of fact, answers out there, but you've got to be willing to actually get some books and spend a little bit of time actually reading them.
I was trying to remember another book title (it's hard when they all have "whales" in it), and stumbled across this, which looks reeeeeally interesting. I haven't read it, but the summary looks really good.
The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins
Podcasts/youtubes are fundamentally going to be opinion pieces unless they're heavily sourced and annotated throughout. If you can't scroll down and see links to primary research in the info, it's not exactly a "resource," it's an unsourced argument. Which if fine! It's just not going to actually do convincing or informing.
That goes for subreddits with a purposeful biased link, including r/socialism and r/capitalism. But bias isn't a bad thing! A source can be 100% accurate and still be biased because they tell only the stories they want to.
A classical liberal has no set definition, I'm afraid. A common theme among modern progressives is . . . nobody can agree on anything. Now classical liberal, it's seemed to have moved to a "defense" identity, something people say to . . . I dunno, blend in or try to say their views aren't as harsh as they're coming off.
Try books by George Lakoff. Moral Politics is a book I remember first scanning on my brother's bookshelf, and it always comes back to me as a starting point for untangling differences between right and left in America.
I'm not a math genius. I installed Anaconda which includes the Spyder IDE. I'm using that to go through the scikit-learn tutorials.
Yesterday I ordered the book The Philosophy of Information by Luciano Floridi. I've been doing some brain-storming and I've realized that information is not the same as knowledge. What we really want to do is convert information into knowledge using a process. This seems obvious, but you really need to think about it on a deep, theoretical level to understand your true goal. Information only becomes knowledge when some kind of action is performed on it. You really need to break down these actions into logical steps to go from information to knowledge.
I picked up Smithsonian's [Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises] (https://www.dk.com/us/9780789489906-smithsonian-handbooks-whales--dolphins/) yesterday, along with The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins, but I'll be sure to check this out, too. Thanks for your help!
Maybe this was already obvious to you, in which case apologies, but those are very broad topics. What kind of level of aggregation are you thinking of? Neural engineering sounds a bit more neural network-y, rather than large-scale human cognitive processes, which would involve measurement methods like EEG and fMRI that won't tell you much (broadly speaking) about the way networks of neurons do computations. You also have local field potential or clamping measurements, where you're looking at what specific neurons (or at least way smaller scales) are doing, which is more animal research. And there's computational modelling which is (relatively, to my knowledge) as yet hardly connected to the usual methods of measuring brain activity.
That said: I read this as an intro to neural networks, http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Computational-Neuroscience-Thomas-Trappenberg/dp/0199568413 and remember liking it, but I was coming from a psych background so I don't know if it would be rigorous enough for you. For the biology / anatomy, the classic is http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Neural-Science-Edition-Kandel/dp/0071390111/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=17R09KD62178HQ06E1VJ.
There's a paper by Wang (1999) with an integrate-and-fire neuron model that I implemented as a toy model that helped me get to grips with the computational side of things. I can't comment on how influential it is theoretically.
Here is a link to the table of contents: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/toc/0199794545/ref=dp_toc?ie=UTF8&n=916520
and there should be a button on this page (below the picture of the book on the left) to let them know that there is interest in a kindle version! http://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Brain-Architecture-Architectures/dp/0199794545
>Is this arbitary unit of '1 second' any relevence to the universe ?
Not really. It originated from the time taken for the earth to spin around and face the sun again (note: NOT the time taken to turn round once), divided by 24 and then 60 and then 60. However the earth slows on its axis due to tidal effects because of the moon, so even this is no longer true. The second is now defined in terms of the number of transitions of a Caesium atom (around 9.1 billion)
>Could we encounter aliens who could take minutes/hours to blink(assuming they had eyes) and us humans would appear to zoom past like Flash ?
Well it is possible. We don't know anything about alien physiology or if they have eyes let alone eyelids.
>Conversely do animals have the same perception of elapsed time ? eg. Sloths vs house fly.
According to this book (Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique by Michael S. Gazzaniga) the passage of time is something humans can perceive but other animals cannot. They don't have the same sense of now or before or after that humans do.
>Why is fighting to protect a working machine from unnecessary modifications unpopular, when the machine still works?
Here's the thing. I'm reading a book called The Political Mind right now. And he talks about one thing that progressives consistently do that empowers conservatives like hell. They think of the world in terms of clean cut rational thought with no emotions, and think that given enough facts and sound reasoning, everyone should understand the Truth. Well, the reality is more subtle than that...
Ron Paul might have done the rationally correct thing to do. But, given that his action was already inefficient (he certainly didn't change the outcome since he was the only one to vote against), this action was more detrimental to the cause of libertarianism than had he for example abstained. Because now, there is an emotional frame in which Ron Paul hates children. I know it sounds dirty, but this is how "they" win. It's entirely human to frame events relative to their emotional context... This is the key to "feel good" advertising, character assassination, swift boating etc. etc.
> That's not proof. How do you prove solipsism isn't a thing?
Axiomatically. If we accept solipsism, any further discussion is pointless, and any positive claim you make on that basis is incoherent. So we reject it based on the counterfactual of it being true.
All proofs accept this axiom, so if you are going to bother with this argument, nothing is proof. And you've abandoned reason entirely, so this discussion is pointless.
>A "self" is distinctly different from qualia.
It is a necessary precondition for qualia, though.
>From what I've seen, plenty of people reject the idea that they have and experience qualia. Often not being able to understand the concept at all.
This is contradictory. Plenty of people reject qualia, but this is usually because they don't understand the concept? Then how can they possibly know what they're rejecting? I don't see any point in considering irrational arguments.
>To me that says they likely don't experience them.
Or they do, and simply don't understand what you mean by "qualia," especially since you are clearly using a nonstandard definition of the term. But even if your term is correct, you cannot logically conclude that simply because someone isn't certain they experience the thing you call "qualia" that they lack it altogether. This would actually contradict your earlier argument that qualia can't be measured...if true, you have no possible way of knowing whether or not this is "likely" or even possible.
>I'm not seeing the logic here. I see no reason that qualia should exist. Let alone how it's even possible.
Argument from ignorance.
>None of these are qualia. You can do this while lacking qualia.
How?
>But as I said, some people outright reject and fail to even comprehend qualia.
Or maybe they're understanding it differently. This is not even close to a conclusive standard by which to determine whether or not qualia exist. Or maybe the thing you believe to be qualia in yourself is an illusion. You can't discount this possibility.
You are making some rather strong assertions about the metaphysical nature of qualia on some rather uncertain or downright unknowable premises. I see no reason to accept this logic.
>And that's exactly why it has huge implications for religious debate. Because some people experience them and some people don't.
Your last sentence here is completely unsubstantiated.
>It's often rejected due to it's unique nature which appears nonphysical.
Math and logic are nonphysical. This is not unique to qualia.
>Most people who accept qualia are dualists, which goes against the skeptic/materialist worldview.
True. I also disagree with dualism, but I don't see why dualism and qualia are necessarily linked. This is an argument ad populum, since you aren't connected the ideas logically, but only based on the number of people who accept this connection.
>Right, but that's just an extra loop. Not an entirely fundamentally unique thing that has no similarities to anything else in the universe, just existing with no real function.
Qualia is similar to plenty of other things, as I just explained. Like math and logic.
>So? I'm referring to the same things. I do like to talk about things in my own way. But it should easily be seen what I mean.
I don't see what you mean. You've never defined your terms, and seem to be changing it periodically, and you aren't using the standard philosophical definition. I've already specifically stated I find it unclear.
You seem to be taking a lot of things at face value that really shouldn't be taken as such when discussing philosophical concepts.
>I don't use definitions when I talk about actual things. When I talk about apples, I don't think of a particular definition. I think of an apple. When I talk about qualia, I don't think of a particular definition. I think of qualia.
And you have a particular concept in mind when you say "apple." If you said you didn't like apples because they were black, spiky, and taste too much like a hot dog, you shouldn't be surprised when people say you are using a nonstandard definition of "apple." If you then responded "that's just what I think of when I say "apple", would that really be an adequate response?
No.
>Right. But the point was to distinguish the qualia from the material brain, whether or not qualia are material.
Something can be contingent upon the material but not material itself. For example, math. Or art.
>Really? I haven't seen anything of the sort. I'd love to see a study demonstrating the existence of qualia. It'd be much easier to point to a scientific study than just fumble around with words.
Here's a whole book on the subject.
>Qualia aren't "a sense of self". You can have that without qualia.
How?
>Qualia would not help in predicting future states of being.
OK, let's go back to the "standard definition" of qualia:
>"The 'what it is like' character of mental states. The way it feels to have mental states such as pain, seeing red, smelling a rose, etc."
If you had no mental states that associated a self with those mental states, how could you predict your future circumstances?
>Qualia are unrelated to both intelligence and imagination.
False. Both are required to possibly experience qualia. What do you think qualia are!?
>It's baffling, ain't it? But realistically such people would operate like complex computers. Nothing inside, but they still take in input and produce output. Lacking qualia wouldn't impair those functions.
How do you know complex computers lack qualia?
>So which part of physics describes the nature of qualia? I've yet to see anything on them.
Neuroscience. There's a whole field related to the operation of the brain. You keep trying to act as if qualia are some independent mystical function, but have already admitted you accept that qualia is contingent upon brains.
>Stable fusion is still an objective observable process. Qualia are not.
Technically it isn't. We can no more stand on the surface of the sun and examine atoms fusing together than we can experience the subjective feelings of other creatures. We learn about it through other means...in the case of qualia, through neuroscience and psychology.
>I was convinced of that for a long time until I met people who absolutely rejected that qualia were a thing, and thought I was talking about nothing.
Maybe you did a poor job of explaining it. Considering our conversation thus far, I find that far more likely than the idea that other people lack subjective experiences.
But let's pretend for a moment this were true...it would utterly destroy any argument for dualism, as it would mean that having a "soul" or non-material aspect to the mind isn't necessary to be human. Your conception of qualia would actually prove that materialism is true for some people but not for others, which is kind of a strange argument.
>So I either had to assume they were dumb, or that they lack qualia.
First of all, never underestimate human stupidity. People believe all kinds of ridiculous things, and understand very little about reality. Even intelligent people have massive blind spots in their understanding of reality...yours seem to be heavily related to neuroscience and physics, for example. So the hypothesis that they are "dumb" is perfectly possible, and more probable than the idea that they lack some fundamental mystical function that you personally possess.
It's also possible you did a shitty job of explaining it. If you used your apple explanation above, I'd probably think you were full of crap, too. The only reason I know there is something to the concept you're talking about is because I've independently researched it; based purely on what you've wrote so far I'd also argue that the thing you're talking about could not exist. And it's not because I'm dumb...it's because you think "qualia is qualia" is an explanation.
>I assumed the former until I ran into so many of them (most atheists seem to reject qualia).
Probably because you are defining it as dualistic. I too reject such unverified nonsense. But qualia is not inherently dualistic.
>And we have no descriptions of how qualia work.
We don't know how dark matter works, either. Or black holes. This is yet another argument form ignorance.
(Continued)
> But we're talking about whether or not there's something nonphysical about me being able to read and listen, right? Different things can get me to think about the same object?
In many cases, there's no particular object that you're thinking about, unless we classify concepts or ideas as 'objects'. But concepts and ideas appear to be abstract objects, not concrete physical things.
> As far as I'm concerned, you're talking about something phsyical: neurons.
I'm not talking about neurons when I talk in the abstract about cars. This is just obvious.
If you want to learn more about the prospects for reducing the semantic to the neurophysiological, you should read Putnam's Representation and Reality. I think it'll do a lot to bring you up to speed; I remember finding it helpful, at least.
>In many cases, there's no particular object that you're thinking about, unless we classify concepts or ideas as 'objects'.
In those cases, we are referring to patterns that we can detect.
All that means is that we have a "circle detector", which just means we have neurons that can detect a circle.
Same as how I have "dog detector" neurons. Its the same thing.
>But concepts and ideas appear to be abstract objects, not concrete physical things.
Not as far as I can tell.
It seems we can describe this stuff physically.
>I'm not talking about neurons when I talk in the abstract about cars. This is just obvious.
"this is just obvious" is not an argument.
>If you want to learn more about the prospects for reducing the semantic to the neurophysiological, you should read Putnam's Representation and Reality. I think it'll do a lot to bring you up to speed; I remember finding it helpful, at least.
You're welcome to present whatever is relevant from that in your own words.
In case you didn't hear about it, this book is excellent: the Memory Illusion.
I got that idea from watching this talk:
Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty with Thomas Metzinger
Metziger is a philosopher of neuroscience. Here is a PDF of his essay on the same topic.
Here is a paragraph from this essay.
>This is another sense in which intellectual honesty is a special case of spirituality. It developed long before science, but after religion; it is a self-critical practice of epistemic action that is not bound to adaptive delusional systems. This practice includes the stance of the philosophical skeptic. After being accused of blasphemy and of corrupting the youths of Athens, Socrates said in his famous apology before the tribunal of Athenians: I neither know nor think that I know. The philosophical virtue of skepticism is the ability to continually question the possibility of a secure, provable knowledge of truth, and to do so in a productive manner — the opposite of dogmatism. Skeptics are dangerous, because they are incorruptible, both towards themselves and towards others.
TL;DR: He points out that the sincere scientist and the spiritual person (he makes distinction from dogmatic religion) have at their core a sincere quest for honesty.
BTW, here is a link to one of his books that I found interesting:
The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
> but the jury is out among llamas as to whether a transmission/empowerment can really happen over the internet.
Simultaneous discernment-release and awareness-release sounds implausible to me in an inherently asynchronous medium...
Source: The Philosophy of Information
Give me a break. There is a difference between anticipating objections and manipulation. Manipulation implies malice or nefariousness.
The sheep argument is a little week. The right can just as easily make that claim against the left. Why people believe things is deeply complex. I suggest this book:
The Political Mind
http://www.amazon.com/Political-Mind-Understand-21st-Century-18th-Century/dp/0670019275
And I do see your point, and I also enjoyed the slightly incorrect analogy.
https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Thinking-Skills-Dummies-Martin-ebook/dp/B00UYXHP0G
Wow, it was only a few seconds.
so how can you not know about bayes theroem, or different reasoning skills? i'm quite happy to say that its a personal interest of mine. i enjoy reading articles and books on psychology, i'm far from an expert in the field... but i know enough not to go around screaming about biases and balance in a public forum where it promises to have none of those.
And yes there are people who have done research into this kind of thing...
https://www.amazon.com/Judgment-under-Uncertainty-Heuristics-Biases-ebook/dp/B00D2WQFP2?ie=UTF8&keywords=judgment%20under%20uncertainty%20heuristics%20and%20biases&qid=1374586297&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1
Awesome! I take it you're not seeing clients yet. I'm applying to internship this year (ugh!). I'm going to give you a reading list because I'm super biased about all this stuff. You have no obligation to read anything I suggest. I'm a contemporary behavior therapy person myself. (ACT, DBT, BA, FAP, MI).
Randomized trial of behavioral activation, cognitive therapy, and antidepressant medication in the acute treatment of adults with major depression. Lead author is Sona Dimidjian (2006) That builds off a Jacobson study (http://tinyurl.com/lb82qhj).
http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Functional-Analytic-Psychotherapy-Behaviorism/dp/0387097864 (this form of therapy could use any uncomfortable situations about your hand to become a therapeutic tool.)
http://www.amazon.com/ACT-Made-Simple-Easy---Read/dp/1572247053/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377316771&sr=1-1&keywords=act+made+simple This is the biggest modern behavior therapy. It's based of relational frame theory (http://www.amazon.com/Learning-RFT-Introduction-Relational-Application/dp/1572249064/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377316825&sr=1-1&keywords=learning+rft)
Last book I'll recommend is the main DBT book. (http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Behavioral-Treatment-Borderline-Personality-Disorder/dp/0898621836)
For sure read the first two articles. They're super important. The rest is just the stuff I'm interested in because I'm biased. Let me know if you ever want to nerd out about the behavioral side of CBT.
That is true to an extent but the other way applies too: atheism tends to create an environment where it tries to insist that religions don't have a monopoly on morality.
As you demonstrated, true morality comes from reason but what if circular reasoning is in itself a part of reason?
This can seem irrational until you get immersed in some idea of heuristics.
This can be from reading articles like this:
> A heuristic technique (/hjʊəˈrɪstɪk/; Ancient Greek: εὑρίσκω, "find" or "discover"), often called simply a heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method, not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, logical, or rational, but instead sufficient for reaching an immediate goal. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples that employ heuristics include using a rule of thumb, an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, a guesstimate, stereotyping, profiling, or common sense.
or buying books such as these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thinking,_Fast_and_Slow
or even better less layman books as these:
https://www.amazon.com/Judgment-under-Uncertainty-Heuristics-Biases-ebook/dp/B00D2WQFP2
Each can be a rabbit hole in itself that may be too vast for this topic but as the general idea goes:
When people suffer a breaking point, they can't afford to debate whether morality comes from God or not.
They simply end up reverting to what data and narratives they can pick up under duress.
This doesn't mean religion is superior to atheism. It just means that when people grow up immersed in a religion they are more likely to do things related to those religions.
Support it (this can involve joining the group or leaving the group to join a sub-related group that aligns with the beliefs of that group but slightly goes against it in a safer environment)
or they join the next easiest route with plenty enough people in it:
This being the next fast food concept competing with the previous fast food restaurant. Atheism.
This doesn't debunk either group, it just means that when a group grows large enough in size - they can make a country worse because large groups tend to become large because there are plenty of people within both groups to hold a sheltered opinion where they can afford to bicker on this.
Of course this doesn't mean that poor people cannot adopt such a stance. It just means someone whether they are poor or not can afford to isolate their opinions and infringe upon the other groups in such a way that it's the minorities or temporary minorities caught between those groups that are least likely to be helped and more likely to found themselves being turned into an outcast where neither group helps them.
It is like an expanded version of this tale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Good_Samaritan
An atheist can be more biased towards being the Samaritan. A theist can be more biased towards being the person hearing the tale of the Samaritan and seeing their religion as the good one.
This can be problematic for those oppressed in a country because the larger group will always indoctrinate you first and then the group that associates itself with being a Samaritan would more likely debate this group then help you during an emergency once it becomes morally uncomfortable for them.
Hence we end up with a basic case of Large group -> I go there for help. Second largest group that is a rebel for the large group -> I join that one because I got hurt by the large group
This produces a false morality where the bigger group is tactically establishing their foothold and the rebel group is too busy fighting the big group that rather than "true" morality blossoming - sometimes something as basic as just helping someone can fall towards minorities within those groups.
A delusional zealot for example would more likely risk being shot to save people while a passionate atheist with plenty of information would more likely protest the heinous acts rather than working on building a tax-free shelter that is so profitable it isn't just a place where the homeless live. It can be a comfortable air-conditioned building with a beautiful set of rituals that give you free food every Sunday.