“Making moral decisions: Are ‘you’ really in charge?”

Heard Graham Bell talk again last week, this time a LAAG event entitled: “Making moral decisions: Are ‘you’ really in charge?” (With scare quotes around the ‘you’ in the original.) Obviously with that title presented that way, I was prejudiced to expect the usual “You and your free-will are illusions” line of denial. In fact, … Continue reading ““Making moral decisions: Are ‘you’ really in charge?””

Simon Blackburn’s Message on Virtues for Humanists

Listening to Simon Blackburn last night at Conway Hall, indeed mulling over the title of his talk before listening to him, it is transparently obvious that he has an important agenda when it comes to his close association with humanism and the BHA. Now Blackburn is probably “the” greatest living British philosopher active and teaching … Continue reading “Simon Blackburn’s Message on Virtues for Humanists”

Battleground Between Intuition & Logic

Not sure about the “battleground” metaphor, but otherwise sounds about right. It’s a plug for tonight’s Horizon documentary featuring Daniel Kahneman on how we really make decisions. My governance agenda: Post doc notes : Hmmm. Too much emphasis on “error and mistake”, too much emphasis on error relative to some “perfect” rational model – assumes perfect … Continue reading “Battleground Between Intuition & Logic”

Motivation 3.0 – Pink Does Maslow

Dan Pink’s “Drive” caught on as a best seller in the last couple of years in promoting the concept of “Motivation 3.0”. Of course, the terminology catches the fashion of the internet generation, and good luck if the brief readable book, with its “Toolkit” of ideas does lead to more management catching on in more … Continue reading “Motivation 3.0 – Pink Does Maslow”

A Partnership Between the Generations

Edmund Burke’s words quoted by Niall Ferguson in the first of his 2012 Reith Lectures “The Rule of Law and its Enemies – #1 The Human Hive“. Glorious vs inglorious revolutions in the light of the Arab Spring. Revolution against “extractive” rule, but for what ? Representative democracies that allow the current generation to vote for … Continue reading “A Partnership Between the Generations”

Dual People

I need to finish off my notes on Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” since I posted some criticisms before I’d read the concluding chapters. Strange to read the explicit dualisms: Two systems – Fast intuitive thinking and Slow considered thinking. Two species – Humans (reasonable) and Econs  (entirely rational). Two selves – Experiencing self … Continue reading “Dual People”

Confirmation Bias

I’m often guilty of confirmation bias. I have a particular world-view that favours balance across multi-levelled patterns, over extreme positions at any one level, so being an unfashionable position (in the blogosphere) I often latch onto examples that illustrate points that support my position. I was expecting Kahneman’s best selling “Thinking Fast and Slow” to be … Continue reading “Confirmation Bias”

Cybernetics

The term Cybernetics tends to be associated with computer control systems and AI these days, but when the term was first coined it was originally about how systems of any kind – social systems – governed themselves. It was back in 2002 I read Jean-Pierre Dupuy’s work on the origins of cognitive science “The Mechanization … Continue reading “Cybernetics”