The Science (Fiction) Of Embodied Cognition
John Pavlus writes on io9.com:
Science fiction has long played with the idea of projecting unified personalities/minds/”souls” into different bodies. The premise is baked into the plots of stories like Avatar and Caprica. But how would it work in the real world?
That’s what the science of “embodied cognition” is all about. The basic idea in this new(ish) research area (which overlaps with cognitive psychology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, and others) is this: Your mind is defined by your physical form. Not just in terms of “the mind is what the brain does”-we all are pretty down with that already. This takes it further to encompass the whole enchilada: your mind-your “I”-is a function of a cephalized, bipedal, plantigrade, bilaterally symmetrical body between 1.5 and 2 meters tall with two arms terminating in five-fingered…
Does Atheism Offer As Much Comfort in Death As Religion?
Greta Christina writes on Alternet:
What is an appropriate atheist philosophy of death?
And how should atheists be talking about death with believers?
As regular readers know, I’ve been doing a project on Facebook: the Atheist Meme of the Day, in which I write pithy, Facebook-ready memes explaining one aspect of atheism or exploding one myth about it, and asking people to pass the memes on if they like. (BTW, if you’re on Facebook, friend me!)
Some of my Memes of the Day have generated disagreement from some atheists. Which is fine, of course. I don’t expect or want all atheists to agree about everything. Quite the contrary: one of the great things about atheism is that we have no central dogma that we all have to agree on, and no central authority that…
Action Camus, the Superman of Nihilism
Was reading Boldtype’s “10 Awesome Books to Give Your Nonreading Friends” where I came across the work of cartoonist R. Sikoryak. Here’a an article about him from The New Yorker:
For twenty years, the cartoonist R. Sikoryak has been creating parody strips of literary masterpieces, casting familiar cartoon characters in classic roles — Little Lulu as Pearl Prynne, Little Nemo as Dorian Gray, Charlie Brown as Gregor Samsa. If you’re like me, and you sometimes like your serious literature with a side of Beavis and Butthead (see Sikoryak’s take on “Waiting for Godot”), you will probably laugh out loud over Masterpiece Comics, a collection of thirteen of these strips, just out from Drawn & Quarterly.
Here is R. Sikoryak’s take on an existentialist superhero:
Check out the The New Yorker link for a Kafkaesque Charlie Brown tale.
An Ethical Question: Does a Nazi Deserve a Place Among Philosophers?
Patricia Cohen investigates in the New York Times:
For decades the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been the subject of passionate debate. His critique of Western thought and technology has penetrated deeply into architecture, psychology and literary theory and inspired some of the most influential intellectual movements of the 20th century. Yet he was also a fervent Nazi.
Now a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be called philosophy. As a result Mr. Faye declares, Heidegger’s works and the many fields built on them need to be re-examined lest they…
Chaoism: An Infantile Disorder
From Black Sun Gazette
“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” – 1 Corinthians 13:11
Chaoists are a lot easier to manipulate than they think. The use of a Bible verse will likely reduce their illogical legions to simpering children. The verse also eloquently summarizes everything that is wrong with chaoism and its related tangents. Put in the brilliant carny simplicity of The Church of Satan: questions all things … but it helps to be able to think first. The paradigms of chaos magick, earnest Discordianism (it’s called a “joke religion” for a reason, people), and radical skepticism (all of which will be referred to in this article…
The Kids in the Hall: “God is Dead”
“The world was shocked. To find out God did in fact exist, and second to find out he was now dead.”
2012: Science or Superstition – Disinformation: The Podcast
Disinformation: The Podcast – 2010: Science or Superstition with Alexandra Bruce
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Woo-woo (or just plain woo) is a term used, often in a dismissive way, by skeptics for dealing with phenomena that can’t be verified by independent evidence, but yet, many people strongly believe in. So who better to investigate the “woo-woo” world of the present-day 2012 phenomenon than author Alexandra Bruce (Beyond The Bleep, Beyond The Secret), no stranger to the realm where pop culture and the esoteric collide.
Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall, hosts of our monthly interview series Disinformation: The Podcast, talk with Alexandra about her new book 2012: Science Or Superstition, a companion to the Disinformation documentary of the same name.
