22 APR 2014 by ideonexus
The Six Facets of Understanding
Explanation: Sophisticated and apt theories and illustrations, which provide knowledgeable and justified accounts of events, actions, and ideas.
Why is that so? What explains such events? What accounts for such action? How can we prove it? To what action is this connected? How does this work?
Interpretation: The act of finding meaning, significance, sense, or value in human experience, data, and texts; to tell a good story, prove a powerful metaphor, or sharpen ideas through an editorial.
... 1 
notes
notesAspects of understanding a concept rather than just knowing about it.
30 JUN 2013 by ideonexus
Digital Archiving Creates an Immense Wealth of History
With digital archiving in all its forms, however, a new regime of technologies for holding past experience has emerged. Our past has always been malleable, but now it is malleable with a new viscosity. Whereas in the past our experiences were frequently (literally!) pigeonholed into rigid classification systems, leading to a relative paucity of tales we could tell of our past, today the traces have multiplied and the rigid classifications are withering. (Who now does a “tree” search using... 1 notes
notesWe once had to document history, but now our lives are documented for us all over the place online.
23 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
You Can Choose Your Memories
In the earliest days of research, memory
was thought to be populated with socalled
engrams, memory traces that were
localized in specific parts of the brain. To
locate one such engram—for the memory
of a maze—psychologist Karl Lashley
taught rats to run through a labyrinth. He
then cut out various parts of their brain
tissue and put them right back into the
maze. Though the rats’ motor function
declined and some had to hobble or crawl
their way woozily through the twists and
turns, the ...Folksonomies: memory mindfulness
Folksonomies: memory mindfulness
1 We can cognitively choose what memories will be stored longterm and which to let go, but we normally operate on autopilot, allowing novelties into our longterm memory-space.
26 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Cognitive Rigidity
Two experiments examined the relation between mindfulness practice and cognitive rigidity by using a variation of the Einstellung water jar task. Participants were required to use three hypothetical jars to obtain a specific amount of water. Initial problems were solvable by the same complex formula, but in later problems (“critical” or “trap” problems) solving was possible by an additional much simpler formula. A rigidity score was compiled through perseverance of the complex formula...Folksonomies: meditation cognitive rigidity
Folksonomies: meditation cognitive rigidity
Demonstrated using tests with "traps" that can only be overcome with novel thinking.
08 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Belief in Matter is Like Belief in God
As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scient...Folksonomies: empiricism
Folksonomies: empiricism
1 notes
notesExcept the belief in matter has proved much more reliable and useful.
14 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
The Problem of Induction
It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future. 1 notes
notesIs not a problem if we accept empirical generalizations from past experiences as continuing to prove true in the future.
