my mind on books

An excellent post by Mark Liberman at Language Log on “Behindology” (Italian “dietrologia” “the attempt to trump even the most fanciful and contorted conspiracy theory“) is jam-packed with ideas about reasoning and interpretations in everyday life.

An excerpt:

The mode of reasoning in dietrologia is abduction: inference to the best explanation. Abduction is a good thing — it’s a key component of the machinery of science — so why does abduction here lead to “fanciful and contorted” theories? There seem to be two problems: a lack of effective coupling to the friction and inertia of fact, and an excessive value placed on indirect and even counter-intuitive explanations.

Later on:

But our inferences about the beliefs, goals and intentions of others are seriously underdetermined by their actions and statements. And those of us who think we’re more insightful than average may just be more imaginative.

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• Accelerating Future posted an “Evolutionary Psychology Master List” of online papers (that also links to a wiki version).
• Human Behavior & Evolution Society has among many resources an extensive book list. The most recent date I saw was 2005.
• Here at “My Mind on Books” I have a list of evolutionary psychology books from 2007 that could use updating into 2008, but I might try to go back into 2006 also, so it could be a continuation of the HBES list….
• As if that’s not enough, here are some lists at Amazon: Listmania! evolutionary psychology

Thanks to The Frontal Cortex for posting on this book: The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott E. Page (Princeton University Press, 2007)

Here is a podcast with Page at “Invisible Handwriting”,

a recent New York Times article,

and a long review at Crooked Timber.

Link to the review

author (of the book) Gregg Easterbrook’s webpage

New reviews come out on Tuesdays at Metapsychology Online Reviews, and today’s batch includes reviews of The Biology of Freedom: Neural Plasticity, Experience and the Unconscious, an “attempt to synthesize psychoanalysis and neurobiology,” and The Concepts of Consciousness: Integrating an Emerging Science, which, according to the review, failed to realize the hoped-for conceptual integration, although the individual chapters are deemed worthwhile.