Hot Thought

Psychology meets philosophy: knowledge, reality, morality, meaning

Paul Thagard Ph.D.

A Critique of Christof Koch's Account of Consciousness

Neural theories of consciousness are on the rise, but Information Integration Theory is a poor candidate.

Balancing Lives in Pandemic Decisions

Policy choices about the COVID-19 pandemic are often described as requiring a balance between health and the economy, but what is balancing?

New Quarantine Concepts

The coronavirus pandemic has brought many new concepts such as "flattening the curve" and "quarantine haircut." What is the nature of these concepts and how were they formed?

Pandemic Playlist: Songs for Crisis

Happy and sad songs can help people to deal with emotions in a crisis that is both medical and social.

Virus Ethics: Who Gets the Ventilator?

Medical systems are becoming overwhelmed by the new coronavirus disease, leading to dilemmas about how to distribute scarce resources such as ventilators. Values are crucial.

Cooking, Cubism, and Brain Soup

The development of new methods in art and science works by the same mental processes seen in the invention of cooking, cubist art, and counting neurons.

Strong Advice on Aging, but Dubious Thoughts on Retirement

Daniel Levitin’s new book on aging has excellent advice on topics such as memory, sleep, exercise, and diet, but not on retirement.

Why Does Tai Chi Feel Good?

Tai chi is moving meditation with cognitive benefits by focusing attention, emotional benefits by breathing coordinated with body movements, and social benefits by group action.

The Moral Psychology of the Green New Deal

The Green New Deal is a radical plan to avoid disastrous harms from climate change while increasing equality, so that more people will be able to satisfy their needs. Is it ethical?

How To Build Beneficial AI

Stuart Russell’s preference-based proposal on how to build beneficial AI is impractical and contrary to plausible views in psychology and philosophy.

Finding Meaning in Life Through Philosophy and Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy helps people find meaning in their lives by reflecting on their feelings. Philosophy complements this process by examining what is objectively meaningful.

Cultural Appropriation, Appreciation, and Denigration

Singer Kacey Musgraves and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have been accused of cultural appropriation. Did they engage in denigration or just appreciation?

Does It Matter What Minds Are Made Of?

Contrary to claims that thinking is an abstract process that could operate in diverse machines, it matters that minds are brains coupled with bodies.

Why Pets Are NOT People

Pets are not people because humans have many mental and social advantages that show that owning pets is not slavery.

Harari’s Mistakes about Mind and Brain

Yuval Noah Harari’s books make interesting observations and conjectures about human societies, but lack understanding of the operations of mind and brain.

How to Build Ethical Artificial Intelligence

AI raises difficult ethical questions about employment, privacy, inequality, killer robots, and machine domination. Answers to these questions can be based on vital human needs.

National Emotions

Many countries and regions have feelings that community members recognize as typical of them. What is your national emotion?

Should You Believe in Psychics?

Belief in psychics is based on poor evidence and personal motivations rather than sound reasoning.

How Can You Tell If Your Lover Is Cheating?

The best explanation of possible signs of cheating requires taking into account the evidence explained, alternative explanations, simplicity, analogy, and deeper explanations.

The Ethics of Basic Income

Poverty causes many problems. Basic income is a plausible social mechanism for alleviating poverty and thereby providing vital needs satisfaction for many people.

When You Love Someone, What Do You Love?

The object of your love is an embodied person who consists of interacting social, psychological, neural, and molecular mechanisms.

Do Animals Feel Grief?

The hypothesis that nonhuman animals grieve is the best explanation of behavior in many species.

When Did Consciousness Begin?

Arthur Reber argues that consciousness began with bacteria and other single-celled organisms, but evidence supports a much later evolution of consciousness.

When All Else Fails, Lower Your Standards

You should change your goals when you realize that pursuing them does not contribute to satisfying your basic needs.

How Does Current AI Stack Up Against Human Intelligence?

Recent advances in artificial intelligence are impressive, including deep learning, IBM's Watson, and driverless cars. A video describes how human intelligence is still better.

How Fear Leads to Anger

Emotions cause other emotions—such as when people’s fears make them angry at those deemed responsible for making them afraid.

What Is Trust?

Trust and mistrust are emotional processes that operate in the brain through bindings of representations of persons, situations, appraisals, and physiology.

Kavanaugh Versus Blasey Ford: Who Is More Credible?

Explanatory coherence analyzes the logic of the question of whether Kavanagh assaulted Blasey Ford, and emotional coherence explains why people deviate from such logic.

The Psychology of Hothouse Earth

Weather disasters associated with the development of Hothouse Earth require education that affects both cognition and emotion.

If Truth Isn’t Truth, What Is It?

The correspondence theory of truth beats alternatives because it explains scientific agreement, the obstinacy of experiments against social influence, and technological successes.

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