Ten Virtues for the Modern Age The Virtues Project comes as a response to the wave of discussion and feedback that followed the publication of my book, Religion for Atheists, and a growing sense that being virtuous has become a strange and depressing notion, while wickedness and evil bask in a peculiar kind of glamour. My ultimate aim for the project is that it ignites a vital conversation around moral character to increase public interest in becoming more virtuous and connected as a society. In the modern world, the idea of trying to be a ‘good person’ conjures up all sorts of negative associations: of piety, solemnity, bloodlessness and sexual renunciation, as if goodness were something one would try to embrace only when other more difficult but more fulfilling avenues had been exhausted. Throughout history, societies have been interested in fostering virtues, in training us to be more virtuous, but we're one of the first generations to have zero public interest in this. 1. Resilience. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
The 11 Best Psychology and Philosophy Books of 2011 by Maria Popova What it means to be human, how pronouns are secretly shaping our lives, and why we believe. After the year’s best children’s books, art and design books, photography books, science books, history books, and food books, the 2011 best-of series continues with the most compelling, provocative and thought-provoking psychology and philosophy books featured here this year. We spend most of our lives going around believing we are rational, logical beings who make carefully weighted decisions based on objective facts in stable circumstances. The original trailer for the book deals with something the psychology of which we’ve previously explored — procrastination: And this excellent alternative trailer is a straight shot to our favorite brilliant book trailers: Despite his second-person directive narrative, McRaney manages to keep his tone from being preachy or patronizing, instead weaving an implicit “we” into his “you” to encompass all our shared human fallibility.
Speak, Memory by Oliver Sacks In 1993, approaching my sixtieth birthday, I started to experience a curious phenomenon—the spontaneous, unsolicited rising of early memories into my mind, memories that had lain dormant for upward of fifty years. Not merely memories, but frames of mind, thoughts, atmospheres, and passions associated with them—memories, especially, of my boyhood in London before World War II. Moved by these, I wrote two short memoirs, one about the grand science museums in South Kensington, which were so much more important than school to me when I was growing up; the other about Humphry Davy, an early-nineteenth-century chemist who had been a hero of mine in those far-off days, and whose vividly described experiments excited me and inspired me to emulation. I think a more general autobiographical impulse was stimulated, rather than sated, by these brief writings, and late in 1997, I launched on a three-year project of writing a memoir of my boyhood, which I published in 2001 as Uncle Tungsten.1
Category mistake A category mistake, or category error, is a semantic or ontological error in which "things of one kind are presented as if they belonged to another",[1] or, alternatively, a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property. Thomas Szasz argued that minds are not the sort of things that can be said to be diseased or ill because they belong to the wrong category and that "illness" is a term that can only be ascribed to things like the body; saying that the mind is ill is a misuse of words. Another example is the metaphor "time crawled", which if taken literally is not just false but a category mistake. To show that a category mistake has been committed one must typically show that once the phenomenon in question is properly understood, it becomes clear that the claim being made about it could not possibly be true. Gilbert Ryle[edit] The phrase is introduced in the first chapter.[2] The first example is of a visitor to Oxford. See also[edit] References[edit] Notes
30 Very Funny Books--Seriously It's a dreary day, so I thought I'd indulge myself and come up with a list of my favorite comedies. A caveat, however: this is not a fancy English-professor-y list of the finest, most exquisitely crafted, most erudite or intellectually sophisticated works on paper in the language. This is a list of the books that make me laugh until my mascara starts to run. These are books to read over your first cup of coffee or just before you go to sleep . Remember: a day you've laughed is day you haven't wasted--even if you didn't get out of bed. Some days you need a jump-start to get to the funny parts of life. You've probably heard of most of these titles, and maybe you've already read several of them. You ready? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. And of course this is just the beginning.
How to Stimulate Curiosity and Promote Learning Curiosity is the engine of intellectual achievement — it’s what drives us to keep learning, keep trying, keep pushing forward. But how does one generate curiosity, in oneself or others? George Loewenstein, a professor of economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, proposed an answer in the classic 1994 paper, “The Psychology of Curiosity.” Curiosity arises, Loewenstein wrote, “when attention becomes focused on a gap in one’s knowledge. Such information gaps produce the feeling of deprivation labeled curiosity. The curious individual is motivated to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate the feeling of deprivation.” (MORE: Secrets of the Most Successful College Students) Here, three practical ways to use information gaps to stimulate curiosity: 1. (MORE: How to Raise a Group’s IQ) 2. 3.
Elementary Worldly Wisdom A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom As It Relates To Investment Management & Business Charles Munger, USC Business School, 1994 I'm going to play a minor trick on you today because the subject of my talk is the art of stock picking as a subdivision of the art of worldly wisdom. That enables me to start talking about worldly wisdom—a much broader topic that interests me because I think all too little of it is delivered by modern educational systems, at least in an effective way. And therefore, the talk is sort of along the lines that some behaviorist psychologists call Grandma's rule after the wisdom of Grandma when she said that you have to eat the carrots before you get the dessert. The carrot part of this talk is about the general subject of worldly wisdom which is a pretty good way to start. So, emphasizing what I sometimes waggishly call remedial worldly wisdom, I'm going to start by waltzing you through a few basic notions. What is elementary, worldly wisdom? What are the models?
Can Passion and Security Coexist? Reflections on Cronenberg’s "A Dangerous Method" "Where such men love, they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love." Freud , S. Collected Papers. IV, Hogarth, 1925. Once you've built a home, a family, a life together, how do you make sense of the fact that the thrill is–or seems to be–gone? In the new David Cronenberg film, , a tortured Carl Jung struggles with these very questions. With Freud's help, Jung uncovers the source of Sabina's troubles– traumatic , sexual memories , of course (no spoiler there)–and on she goes, almost completely cured, to become a doctor, herself. Sabina is Freud's id incarnate–raw, unbridled passion and anger ; and Jung, a staid Protestant, constantly searching for power and mystery beyond the tame domestic existence with his rich, heiress wife, finds her completely irresistible. Jung, for his part, gives into his desires. What, if anything, can we do about this? In fairness, since Jung's (and Freud's) time, we've learned that the story is a little more complicated.
The London Psychology Collective Insight If we eliminate system one, system two isn't going to get the job done because you can't live by system two. There are people who try, there are people who have had various kinds of brain lesions that create disconnects between their emotions and their decision-making process. Damasio has written about them. It can take them 30 minutes to figure out what restaurant they want to go to. Their performance on intelligence tests isn't impaired, but their performance in living their lives is greatly impaired; they can't function well, and their lives go downhill. So we know that trying to do everything purely rationally, just following Bayesian statistics or anything like that isn't going to work. Too often it's treated as a real dichotomy, and too many organizations that I study try to encourage people to just follow procedures, just follow the steps, and to be afraid to make any mistakes. Rather than perform standard research and manipulate variables, we said, "Let's talk to the experts."
Gossip is basically only thing holding society together, says science Prosocial gossip is so barely gossip. Isn't it more like a news report? If I know someone's being cheated, is there any way I can inform them of this that you can't apply the definition of gossip to? I mean, we're talking first-hand witness report here, of something directly relevant to the hearer's wellbeing in some form or another. By the time you've satisfied the requirement for "prosocial" you've largely departed from the common understanding of the word, and you might as well call it something else or always use the modifier, because it's going to be confusing. However, I note lower on the page there seems to be the implication that "bitch" is a term with some gender associations, so who knows?
All About Psychology Many thanks for taking the time to check out my psychology website. My name is David Webb and I've had a passionate interest in studying and teaching psychology for over 20 years. I have a first class honors degree in psychology and a Masters in Occupational psychology from the University of Sheffield (UK). In 2003 I moved to sunny Spain with my family, where in addition to writing and hosting the All About Psychology Website, I also work as an online tutor and research dissertation supervisor. The All About Psychology website ( was launched in March 2008 and is designed to help anybody looking for detailed information and resources. The Psychology Journal Articles Collection: Get completely free access to classic full text journal articles, including material from the most eminent and influential psychologists of the 20th century. Psychology Student Survival Guide:
An overview of the recognition primed decision making model What is it? In 1985 Gary Klein and others began to develop the recognition primed decision making model. They were studying decision making in the army and were examining how fire fighting chiefs make decisions. They realized that these expert decision-makers were not comparing lists of options. They were not even comparing two options. So they ended up revising the whole research project and came up with a model of how people actually make decisions. This description they called the recognition primed decision making model. How it works In a given situation, the decision maker will pick up cues and indicators that let them recognise patterns. Klein and Co. wondered how people could assess this single option if they were not comparing it to something else. The mental simulation was based on mental models that the decision maker had developed through experience. Moving forward If the decision maker considers the action script will achieve the outcome, they go ahead. Expertise and patterns