Psychology Blog

… on bloggingheads.tv. Two of my favorite scholars!

Josh says that ordinary reasoning about mental states is unlike scientific reasoning because our reasoning about mental states is influenced by our moral judgments (as his work suggests) while scientific reasoning is not so influenced. Alison, in contrast, is a leading proponent of the view that scientific reasoning and ordinary reasoning have much in common, especially in children. Josh plays the role of interviewer and lets Alison do most of the talking.

Near the end, Alison touches briefly on what I think is the key flaw on Josh’s argument, the unwarranted assumption that scientific reasoning is not much influenced by moral judgments. In my view — and I think this is now the majority view in philosophy of science — scientific thinking is, and should be, thoroughly permeated with emotion and morality. The old model of the impartial, objective scientific observer cannot be sustained. So there’s no reason Josh’s findings about the effects of moral judgments on ordinary reasoning have to stand in conflict with Alison’s view of the continuity of scientific and everyday reasoning.

Joshua Knobe and Alison Gopnik Debating Children’s and Scientific Thinking

Noticing my son’s playmates and classmates, the following thought occurs to me: Didn’t Sidney used to be a man’s name? And August? And Loren?

Being an empirically-minded philosopher (and one with a little time away from classes), I had to check. I went to the U.S. Social Security Administration’s baby names site and I looked up the 1000 most popular boy and girl baby names for 1900 and for 2000. August, to my surprise, didn’t rate among the top 1000 girls’ names (though I know two young Augusts, both girls), but Sidney and Loren both made the gender switch. In 1900, Sidney was #108 among boy names and #777 among girls. By 2000, the ratio had flipped to #594 for boys and #264 for girls. Same with Sydney: In 1900 #730 among boys, unranked among girls; in 2000, unranked among boys and a startling #23 among girls. Loren/Lauren pulled the same trick: In 1900, #342 and #943 for boys, unranked for girls; in 2000, #704 and #11 for girls, unranked for boys.

In other words, Loren/Lauren and Sidney/Sydney went from being modestly popular boys’ names to being the leading girls’ names. But does it ever go the other way around? Do girls’ names ever become boys’ names? I wouldn’t think so: Calling a girl “Joe” (or “Jo”) or “Jack” (”Jaq”) is cute; calling a boy “Anna” or “Mary” doesn’t have quite the same effect. In fact, it might be perceived as something like a lifetime curse.

So I ran a few analyses. In the SSA lists, I found 26 names that switched from masculine in 1900 to feminine in 2000 and 4 that went the other way. (That’s p
Male to Female:
(apologies for the small reproduction: click to enlarge)As is evident from this list, 5 of the top 25 girls’ names in 2000 (Madison, Taylor, Lauren, Sydney, Morgan) were boys’ names in 1900! The gender migration of girls’ names to boys’ names looks very different.These seem to be aberrations, not a trend. Two appear to be due to an increasing acceptability of “-ie” and not just “-y” as a proper spelling of the long-e suffix for male names. The other two are due to the precipitous decline of “Jean” and “Joan” as girls’ names, coupled presumably with the retention of those names as foreign equivalents of the durably and internationally popular boys’ name “John”. None ranks among the top 500 boys’ names.

I can’t resist concluding with the thought that if trends continue, someday every Tom, Dick, and Harry will be a girl.

Read the rest here:
The Gender Migration of Names

here. Insights on the nature and advantages of the medium. Much, but not all, applies to academic blogs.

From my first post in April 2006 through our adoption of Kate in March 2008, I posted relentlessly Mon-Wed-Fri. Now it’s more like once a week. I suspect that not only the one-year-old child but also the new ipod have cut into my blogging: Many blogging ideas used to come during morning walks, which are now sometimes filled with Frank Sinatra, Al Stewart, or This American Life instead. I haven’t decided if this is a good thing or bad.

Oh, and Happy (recent or continuing) Whatever! (Global Orgasm Day, for example.)

Read the original here:
Andrew Sullivan on “Why I Blog”

The latest Nature Neuropod podcast has just hit the wires and as is fitting for the December edition it contains a great roundup of the year’s neuroscience highlights.

There’s also a tribute to recently departed HM from neuropsychologist Susan Corkin, a visit to the UCL brain bank (check the wonderfully appropriate Hammer Horror German accent) and some interesting updates from the world of molecular neuroscience.

In the final section, Nature Neuroscience editor Charvy Narain discusses her highlights of the year in new discoveries and what better way to end the year.

Link to Neurpod page and streaming.
mp3 of December podcast.

View original post here:
Neuropod on HM, brain banking and 2008 highlights

The latest Nature Neuropod podcast has just hit the wires and as is fitting for the December edition it contains a great roundup of the year’s neuroscience highlights.

There’s also a tribute to recently departed HM from neuropsychologist Susan Corkin, a visit to the UCL brain bank (check the wonderfully appropriate Hammer Horror German accent) and some interesting updates from the world of molecular neuroscience.

In the final section, Nature Neuroscience editor Charvy Narain discusses her highlights of the year in new discoveries and what better way to end the year.

Link to Neurpod page and streaming.
mp3 of December podcast.

See the rest here:
Neuropod on HM, brain banking and 2008 highlights