7 Posts Found

We feel our way through life, then rationalize our actions, as if emotion were a shameful scar on the countenance of reason. […] Our emotional lives [are] the root of our motives beneath the topsoil of reason and rationalization. – Maria Popova

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We suffer primarily because we are so insentient to our own emotions, so illiterate in reading ourselves. – Maria Popova

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The main difficulty that faces … [ Read more ]

Authors: John Macmurray, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement, Senses, Thought | Inquiry

“My experience is what I agree to attend to.” – William James

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“Nothing we do or experience … is untouched by our own expectations. Instead, there is a constant give-and-take in which what we experience reflects not just what the world is currently telling us, but what we — consciously or nonconsciously — were expecting it to be telling us. One consequence of this is that … [ Read more ]

Authors: Andy Clark, Maria Popova, William James | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Insight, Psychology | Behavior, Senses, Thought | Inquiry

Psychologist and law professor Dan Kahan and his collaborators have described two phenomena that affect the ways in which people form different beliefs from the same information.

The first is called “identity-protective cognition.” This describes how individuals are motivated to adopt the empirical beliefs of groups they identify with in order to signal that they belong.

The second is “cultural cognition”: people tend to say that a … [ Read more ]

Author: James Steiner-Dillon | Source: The Conversation (March 2, 2023) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Ethics | Integrity | Morality, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry

Cognitive flexibility is a skill that enables us to switch between different concepts, or to adapt behaviour to achieve goals in a novel or changing environment. It is essentially about learning to learn and being able to be flexible about the way you learn. This includes changing strategies for optimal decision-making.

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Cognitive flexibility provides us with the ability to see that what we are doing is … [ Read more ]

Authors: Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Christelle Langley, Victoria Leong | Source: The Conversation (June 21, 2021) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Thought | Inquiry

Logic is the bedrock of pretty much all human knowledge. As such, philosophers have killed many trees over the centuries, analyzing and determining the principles that define logic and reason. Their ambition has been to determine what we can know to be true and what we cannot know to be true.

What most people don’t realize is that logical fallacies—that is, errors in judgment and reasoning—are … [ Read more ]

Author: Mark Manson | Subjects: Communication, Concepts, Education | Scholarship, Intelligence | Knowledge, Personal Improvement, Politics & Public Policy, Thought | Inquiry

Three primary reasons people are attracted to conspiracy theories:

1. Conspiracy theories make us feel special. According to Tom Nichols, “[Conspiracy] theories also appeal to a strong streak of narcissism: there are people who would choose to believe in complicated nonsense rather than accept that their own circumstances are incomprehensible, the result of issues beyond their intellectual capacity to understand, or even their own fault.” In other

… [ Read more ]

Author: Joe Forrest | Source: Instrument of Mercy (May 7, 2020) | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Excerpts, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry

Welcome the new world with open arms—and browsers.

Author: Tyler Cowen | Source: The Wilson Quarterly (Autumn2009) | Subjects: Articles & Links, Excerpts, Information, Life & Society, Perspective, Productivity & Time Management, Thought | Inquiry