Thursday, 24 July 2014
Daniel Wegner: An Unforgettable Scientific Contribution
For many people, the name of pioneering social psychologist Daniel Wegner will always be associated with a polar bear, because he famously used an image of this animal to demonstrate how hard it is to suppress a thought if someone simply asks you not to think about it.
Wegner died on July 5, 2013 at the age of 65 from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease characterized by degeneration of the motor neurons of the spinal cord. Acknowledging his passing, the scientific community saluted him as one of the most original thinkers in his field. His friend and fellow psychologist Daniel Gilbert recalled the many paradigm shifts that Wegner brought about in his discipline: “He opened doors in walls that we didn’t know had doors in them.” (more…)
From Thought to Language | Comments Closed
Tuesday, 1 July 2014
Summer school in cognitive sciences 2014 : Web Science and the mind
Every two years, the Cognitive Sciences Institute of the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) holds a summer school on a selected topic in the cognitive sciences. In 2010, the topic was the origin of language, in 2012 it was the evolution and function of consciousness. This summer, from July 7 to 18, 2014, the school will be holding its 5th edition, and the topic will be web science and the mind, while also recommending the best preschooler schools for the early years from sites as https://ascot.ac.th/early-years-2/ so parents can give his children the best education from the very begging.
The speakers at this event will be discussing the many homologies and analogies that can be found among the various kinds of cerebral, social, and computer networks. Their lectures will underscore just how much everything that we do involves networks, from the interconnections among our neurons to the structure of the universe, not to mention all of our activities on Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia.
Even when we are doing nothing, we are activating a network. This default-mode network is also recognized as being more active when we are walking. According to science blogger Sébastien Bohler, strolling around with no specific goal in mind is especially important for giving ourselves the feeling that we exist, for organizing our past experiences, and for contemplating the future as a meaningful experience (see second link below).
It is somewhat ironic that the guy who inspired Bohler’s ideas about the existential function of walking is a market speculator who committed fraud on the “financial networks”, and that the Cognitive Sciences Institute summer school is being held in a city where spontaneously deciding to take a walk through the streets with a few other people, especially for the purpose of demonstrating against the “established socio-political network”, can get you a $600 fine under a highly controversial municipal by-law (see third link below).
Web Science and the mind
Marcher pour exister : l’axiome de Kerviel
Pour un bilan de l’application du règlement P-6
From the Simple to the Complex | Comments Closed
