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Scientific American summarizes studies which locate people’s distrust of atheists in their fears that atheists are more likely to act deviously in secret because they fear no god is watching them. We have talked about such research before. Then this article explores other research which gives indications about how to combat this problem: When we know [...]
Archive for the ‘Psychology’ Category
How To Make God Die A Little More
January 17th, 2012 
Daniel Fincke A Cool Optical Effect
January 12th, 2012 Daniel Fincke I saw this image on Facebook and I find it mesmerizing. Your Thoughts?
Baby Morality
January 12th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Yale psychologist and author of How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like, Paul Bloom discusses the evidence that certain behaviors, dispositions, and feelings on which morality is built are innate in us and present already in babies: Relatedly, Alison Gopnik’s The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About [...]
Posted in Ethics, Ethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Psychology, Psychology 
Tags: Babies, babies and morality, Compassion 
2 Comments »MRI’s Show Internet Can Be Addictive Like Cocaine
January 12th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Over LoggingGet More: SOUTHPARKmore… That full, brilliant South Park episode is here. Now the science: Internet addiction has for the first time been linked with changes in the brain similar to those seen in people addicted to alcohol, cocaine and cannabis. In a groundbreaking study, researchers used MRI scanners to reveal abnormalities in the brains [...]
Posted in Psychology, Psychology Tags: Internet addiction, internet like cocaine, MRI scans No Comments »Pascal Boyer on Imaginary Friends and Supernatural Agents
January 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Sorry for the hiccup as the site was down, but now that we’re back up, the blogathon goes on! Onward to 9:00am! Reading Pascal Boyer’s frequently illuminating Religion Explained last fall, the single most interesting part for me was his discussion of imaginary friends. According to my mom I had countless imaginary friends as a [...]
How and Why Do We Deceive Ourselves?
January 11th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Robert Trivers, author of the new book The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life explores some of the stranger scientific studies of self-deception: Robert Trivers: Why Do We Deceive Ourselves? from The RSA on FORA.tv Your Thoughts?
Emotions and Control
January 10th, 2012 Daniel Fincke In November, a Christian gelato store owner temporarily put up a sign refusing to serve attendees of Skepticon IV because he had briefly visited the convention, witnessed a satire of Christian revivalists, and been offended. In response, there was an uproar on the internet against the gelato store owner which led to him apologizing. I [...]
The Dangers of Religion Itself
January 8th, 2012 Daniel Fincke Salvaging Religion In this post I am going to explore the dangers of religion. For some context, I have written often that I think that there are good things that go by the name religion that atheists should try to salvage from authoritarians, irrationalists and bigots. I am generally optimistic about the idea that we [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Cultural Secularism, Faith, Fundamentalism, Fundamentalism, Islam, Islam, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophy, Philosophy Of Religion, Political Secularism, Political Secularism, Politics, Politics, Psychology, Psychology, Religion, Religious Secularism, Religious Secularism, Right Wing Politics, Right Wing Politics, Secularism 40 Comments »The Emotions You SHOULDN’T Blame Anyone For Having
November 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In the last several posts I’ve written about ethics, I have been talking in part about the various ways in which we are ethically responsible for our emotions and for reasoning through them. One thing worth to make explicit, which I simply assumed people would understand, is that I have been talking in those posts [...]
Lou Marinoff Explains Philosophical Counseling
November 22nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke Lou Marinoff is the Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the City College of New York and the author of Plato, Not Prozac! He is a founder of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association. He appeared on Massimo Pigliucci’s Rationally Speaking podcast two days ago to explain the concept of philosophical counseling. It’s a fascinating and [...]
Atheists Perceived As Less Trustworthy Than Rapists??
November 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke I may have underestimated in the past just how bad misperceptions of us are: Consider one of the experiments. One hundred and five students read a brief vignette about a man who fails to take responsibility when he hits a parked van with his car, and then pockets money from a wallet he finds on [...]
Thinking According To Scale
November 21st, 2011 Daniel Fincke PZ and Crommunist offer nice denunciations of the significance of a graphic which has been going around the internet which concludes that the chance of any given individual alive today ever existing was 1 in 102,685,000. Below the fold is the graphic, key snippets of their remarks and the lesson to draw for how we should consider [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Biology, Biology, Ethics, Ethics, Evolution, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Metaethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Naturalistic Fallacy, Naturalistic Fallacy, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Probability, Psychology, Psychology, PZ Myers, PZ Myers, Science, Science, Sociobiology, Sociobiology Tags: Crommunist Manifesto, Grind the universe down to its finest powder, Hierarchical Reductionism, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Richard Dawkins on Reductionism, Terry Pratchett, The Blind Watchmaker 3 Comments »What Are Monkeys’, Chimps’, and Dogs’ Thoughts Like?
November 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke In this audio file from Philosophy Bites, philosopher of mind Tim Crane discusses what philosophical and psychological methods there are for potentially figuring out what kinds of minds and thoughts animals might have. He has the most to say about chimps, monkeys, and dogs. He is the author of The Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines and Mental Representation,Elements [...]
Mimicking the Brain in Silicon
November 20th, 2011 Daniel Fincke MIT researchers make progress towards a potentially amazing accomplishment: For decades, scientists have dreamed of building computer systems that could replicate the human brain’s talent for learning new tasks. MIT researchers have now taken a major step toward that goal by designing a computer chip that mimics how the brain’s neurons adapt in response to [...]
Is Oxytocin The “Morality Molecule”
November 7th, 2011 Daniel Fincke That is Paul Zak’s theory. The video is fascinating: Now I just need to find 8 people to hug me everyday. (via Philosopher’s Haze, who you can read for a summary if you cannot watch the video for some reason). Patricia Churchland’s book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality explores the role of Oxycotin in morality [...]
Posted in Biology, Biology, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophy, Psychology, Psychology Tags: Adam Smith, Empathy, Oxytocin, Paul Zak, Trustworthiness 9 Comments »You Are Not So Smart
October 31st, 2011 Daniel Fincke The website You Are Not So Smart does an outstanding job of explaining all sorts of cognitive errors for a lay audience in an engaging way. Last week Dave McRaney, the site’s author, released a book version called You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly [...]
Judging Yourself Truthfully
October 15th, 2011 Daniel Fincke One of the most important mental disciplines is to assess yourself honestly. We are so naturally susceptible to judging ourselves according to both the flattery of our admirers and of our own ego, on the one hand, and the disdain of our detractors and our own irrational fears, on the other. It takes a lot [...]
Don’t Demonize Religious People’s Motives, Focus On Their Objective Harms (Tip 6 of 10 For Reaching Out To Religious Believers)
October 7th, 2011 Daniel Fincke 1. Don’t Call Religious Believers Stupid. 2. Make Believers Stay on Topic During Debates. 3. Don’t Tell Religious Believers What They “Really Believe”. 4. Clarify What Kinds of Evidence Warrant What Kinds of Beliefs. 5. Help Break The Spell Of Religious Reverence. 6. Don’t Demonize Religious People’s Motives, Focus On Their Objective Harms Sometimes religion [...]
How Evangelicals Can Be Very Hurtful Without Being Very Hateful
October 2nd, 2011 Daniel Fincke The weekend after George W. Bush’s reelection, I attended a MoveOn.org get together at my friends’ house. The idea of the event was that people would volunteer their homes to host nationally coordinated local strategy discussions. So, it was me, my two friends, and a whole bunch of hard-left Upper West Side Manhattanites all of [...]
Memorializing Suicides Without Heroizing Suicide
September 28th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Gay blogger Jim Burroway believes that Lady Gaga’s advocacy for the LGBT community is genuine and passionate but worries about a backfire effect of her decision to prominently dedicate a song to one of her young fans who took his life recently: as I watch this video of her performing “Hair” and dedicating it to Jamey Rodemeyer at [...]
What Women Want…In Porn?
September 25th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Susie Bright, in an interview with Salon explains an accidental discovery: There were about a dozen women in the ’80s who started making their own movies, magazines, images, and we fought against all the naysayers. Then, to everyone’s shock, the women’s erotica movement made significant sales. Into the middle of that mix, came along a [...]
Posted in Psychology, Psychology, Sex, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Women's Issues 7 Comments »Moral Perfectionism, Moral Pragmatism, Free Love Ethics, and Adultery
September 19th, 2011 Daniel Fincke Kelly: You are a moral absolutist, Jaime. Jaime: Nonsense. You are the one who wants to impose monogamy on everyone, whether they like it or not. Kelly: No, when we talked the other day, I conceded it was your right to have whatever kinds of open relationships you wanted. I only said that, given human [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Duty, Duty, Ethical Pluralism, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Love, Love, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Psychology, Psychology, Sex, Virtues, Virtues Tags: Adultery, Anti-Adultery, Anti-Monogamy, Changes in Moral Values, Consequentialism, Marriage, Monogamy, Moral Absolutism, Moral Idealism, Moral Institutions, Moral Perfectionism, Moral Revisionism, Moral Values, Non-Moral Values, Pleasure and Pain, Polyamory, Promiscuity, Utilitarianism 60 Comments »How Does Language Shape Our Color Experiences?
September 18th, 2011 Daniel Fincke A fascinating video, via PZ, who also offers some analysis. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b71rT9fU-I&feature=player_embedded#! Your Thoughts?
Internecine War At Freethought Blogs: Philosopher vs. “Redneck” Edition: Free Will And The Real World Smackdown
September 10th, 2011 Daniel Fincke As far as I have noticed, there has not been a blog war between any of the Freethought Blogs (or, er, since we all moved here anyway) so I was a little trepidatious of going and picking apart the every word of a quick comment on one of my posts by my new favorite blogger, Hank [...]
Posted in Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheism, Autonomy, Autonomy, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Ethics, Ethics, Faith, Faith, God, God, Hypocrisy, Hypocrisy, Metaethics, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology Tags: Free Will 19 Comments »Offer Nominations for 3 Quarks Daily’s Prize for Best Blog Writing in Philosophy
September 4th, 2011 Daniel Fincke For the third straight year, 3 Quarks Daily will award a prize for blog writing in philosophy. Nominate what you think is the best philosophy blog post from the last year by 11:59pm EST on Monday night (September 5). Below the fold are both the full details of the contest and a very good video interview [...]
Posted in Biology, Biology, Ethics, Evolution, Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology Tags: Cognitive Science, Neuromorality, Neurophilosophy, Patricia Churchland No Comments »
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