With Christmas less than two weeks away, I imagine many of us have babies on the brain. Apparently I did, because when I went looking for a paper to discuss, what jumped out at me was this paper on infant cognition (Preprint for those without access). It's not an especially splashy paper; it's not getting the news coverage of the latest AI developments or the claims of a theory which can reconcile gravity and quantum theory (a claim which awaits independent verification). But I suppose that's in keeping with the themes … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Deck the Halls with Balls of Agency
cognition
Science Corner: Do You Mind?
I've generally felt it is worth making a distinction between the brain and the mind--the mind is what is mediated by the brain. I'm inclined to affirm free will and think our conscious self is capable of top-down causation. I don't know how or if that version of a mind maps to Biblical nouns like spirit and soul, and I wonder to what extent we are obliged to affirm those precise categories as Christians and to what extent they were the closest available options in Greek metaphysics of the time. I tend to attracted to … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Do You Mind?
Science Corner: Bird-Brained Schematic
Popular idioms aside, birds can actually be quite intelligent, with some species demonstrating the ability to use tools and to develop complex social dynamics. This despite some substantial differences in the anatomy of bird brains compared to those of mammals, particularly humans. A recent set of publications revealed stronger similarities at the level of cellular organization and the way neurons are connected even without the same higher-level anatomical organization. More specifically, bird brains lack a cerebral … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Bird-Brained Schematic
Science Corner: Seeing is Remembering
My mom tells a story of the day she believes she watched me learn object permanence. I was playing with a farm set; I'd drop all of the people and farm animals out of sight behind the barn, then gleefully move it to prove my toys were all still there. We all figure out at a very early age that our moms, our dads, our toys and everything else are persistent objects that we can see again and again. We learn this feature of reality well before we are aware of our own thought process, so most of us never a chance to reflect … [Read more...] about Science Corner: Seeing is Remembering
Expert versus Lay Calendars — Thoughts from “Objects of Time”
A written calendar, then, is not so much as a cognitive tool to assist the reckoning of time, but a cognitive and cultural tool that can either promote social coordination or intersubjective senses of uncanniness, or even both, as in the case of the Jewish calendar. Calendars as artifacts are tools of power and social coordination. There also is an important contrast between complex calendars that require trained experts to interpret them versus simple calendars that almost anyone can use. The former are associated with … [Read more...] about Expert versus Lay Calendars — Thoughts from “Objects of Time”