Encefalus

Lately I have been reading this book: The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind. The book deals, quite obviously, with philosophy of mind and all the matters that touch this subject, including free will. The author is Ben Goertzel who happens to be a very interesting person. He holds a PhD in mathematics, but [...]

I was reading this book the other day: Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life. It’s a very interesting book that deals with the cutting edge of current social and cognitive science: the application of computational modelling in social sciences. I will not talk about the details of this book here [...]

A very simple title. What logic has to do with Encefalus, a blog that mainly deals with psychological issues?
Logic is something that I was always interested in, not for any special reason, but because I am a math-logic geek. But beyond that, I always believed that you can never really do science, unless you have [...]

Lately I have to deal with a lot of things in my life. So, I have been thinking about the relationship between information and the human cognitive system. How much information can we absord at a time? How can we filter the noise out of it and keep the useful stuff? How can we manage [...]

The recent economic crisis made me think a lot about the subject of economics. As I’ve said in earlier posts, I’m very interested in economics, and I believe them to be an integral part of cognitive science, or any science that aims to comprehend the human behavior and civilization (Some thoughts on a new micro-economic [...]

There is a blog in Psychology Today called Freedom to Learn. Its author is Peter Gray. His resume is: "a research professor of psychology at Boston College, is a specialist in developmental and evolutionary psychology and author of an introductory psychology textbook, Psychology, now in its 5th edition."
This blog has some very interesting articles. It’s [...]

The other day I was writing an article for Encefalus concerning economics and studying their relation to psychology. However, as I was writing it, I stumbled upon some problems, like what is the definition of economics. Obviously, modern economists might have different opinions among them, and I, as a psychologist, have a different view on [...]

GeorgeLoewenstein
Remember the article Lotteries, poverty and social implications? I found this article in Scientific American : Lottery Tickets and Credit Cards: The Dangers of an Irrational Brain. It’s an interview with the researcher who’s work we commented in Lotteries, poverty and social implications. He is called George Loewenstein.
What I particularly liked about this interview is [...]

A quick guide to Free Will
I found this article the other day on BPS Research Digest. Do you remember Dr. Read Montague we spoke about at How a single neurotransmitter can provide the basis for the explanation of all social phenomena? This post provided a link to his homepage where he has an article he [...]

Near-Death Experiences: What Really Happens?
I stumbled upon this link the other day. It’s about one of the most exciting experiments I’ve ever seen in my life. Scientists will try to study what really happens with near-death experiences.

Many reports of near-death experiences sound the same: a welcoming white light and a replay of memories. But now [...]

Those of you who read this blog for sometime, already know some of my views concerning psychology. I am an avid supporter of "hard science". Science that is based on solid facts and follows the reductionist paradigm. Even though solid facts are not always the answer and reductionism could be replaced in the following decades [...]

I don’t know if you have noticed it, but there’s a site called Scholarpedia. It seems it was created in 2006, but I hadn’t found the site until recently. What is most interesting is that it’s a lot like Knol, since the articles are written by respectful authors with a scientific style. It seems that [...]