Recently, I wrote about my grant submission to the Templeton Foundation. In the time since, I have also submitted a "letter of intent" to Templeton for a much more ambitious project to bring together those currently working on the variants of embodied cognition. I promised to write something about Templeton's really smart application process, but that will wait for now. Here I wanted to respond, at least a bit, to those who believe Templeton should be shunned. I'm inspired to do so by a recent pair of articles in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In the most recent one, philosophers react to Freeman Dyson question, "When and why did philosophy lose its bite? How did become a toothless relic of past glories?" While the earlier article doesn't answer that exact question, it draws out the conflicting interpretations of "The Templeton Effect" on philosophy: Many are concerned that Templeton is "buying philosophy", but there is also little doubt that Templeton is motivated by concerns similar to Dyson's... and while Dyson is talking about it... Templeton is aggressively making things better.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Friday, October 19, 2012
Perception-action Publishing Opportunity
Greetings noble readers!
As you surely know, the International Conference on Perception and Action is in Lisbon, Portugal, July of next year. That's the big conference that happens every other year, bringing together an international group of researchers interested in understanding motor control, intentional dynamics, perception-action linkages, affordances and affordance-based-control, as well as other topics, empirical and theoretical, that fit under the perception-action or ecological psychology umbrellas. For every conference, a book is published based on the presented posters. Last year's conference, in Brazil, generate Studies in Perception and Action XI, edited by Jay Smart and myself. The president of ISEP, Bill Mace, has asked if I would be willing to work on the book for the Lisbon conference. It would be the first time they have ever had an experienced editor working on the project (probably a good idea in general).
I told Bill I would be happy to lead a team, but wasn't interested in doing the project solo. Then... after some contemplation... I thought it would be good to reach out to this network. We are looking for one, or preferably a few, people willing to sign on with me. I think a three or four person team would be ideal to spread out the work, while not putting too many cooks in the kitchen. This is an excellent opportunity for very senior graduate students, post-docs, new professors - for whom this could act as a career advancement - or anyone more senior who was feeling noble-minded - for whom this would be an admirable act of service. You will get exposed to a vast range of research, interact with several senior members of the field, and establish yourself as a contributing member of the profession.
Obviously, I can't make any promises on who will ultimately be put on the project, but if you would be willing to help out, and would like to be considered, please drop me a line. A call for papers and posters will likely go out soon. There will be an early May deadline for getting the finished product to the publisher. So most of the work will happen in bits and spurts between January and May.
Many thanks,
Eric
P.S. And of course, this is also a publishing opportunity for those who attend, as all presented posters also become (very brief) book chapters.
As you surely know, the International Conference on Perception and Action is in Lisbon, Portugal, July of next year. That's the big conference that happens every other year, bringing together an international group of researchers interested in understanding motor control, intentional dynamics, perception-action linkages, affordances and affordance-based-control, as well as other topics, empirical and theoretical, that fit under the perception-action or ecological psychology umbrellas. For every conference, a book is published based on the presented posters. Last year's conference, in Brazil, generate Studies in Perception and Action XI, edited by Jay Smart and myself. The president of ISEP, Bill Mace, has asked if I would be willing to work on the book for the Lisbon conference. It would be the first time they have ever had an experienced editor working on the project (probably a good idea in general).
I told Bill I would be happy to lead a team, but wasn't interested in doing the project solo. Then... after some contemplation... I thought it would be good to reach out to this network. We are looking for one, or preferably a few, people willing to sign on with me. I think a three or four person team would be ideal to spread out the work, while not putting too many cooks in the kitchen. This is an excellent opportunity for very senior graduate students, post-docs, new professors - for whom this could act as a career advancement - or anyone more senior who was feeling noble-minded - for whom this would be an admirable act of service. You will get exposed to a vast range of research, interact with several senior members of the field, and establish yourself as a contributing member of the profession.
Obviously, I can't make any promises on who will ultimately be put on the project, but if you would be willing to help out, and would like to be considered, please drop me a line. A call for papers and posters will likely go out soon. There will be an early May deadline for getting the finished product to the publisher. So most of the work will happen in bits and spurts between January and May.
Many thanks,
Eric
P.S. And of course, this is also a publishing opportunity for those who attend, as all presented posters also become (very brief) book chapters.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
"We are" Penn State... apparently
Some readers might know that I teach at a branch campus of Penn State. In the context of a high ranking research institution, I am at a 4,000 person campus trying to transition from being a 2-year "feeder" school just over a decade ago, to a bachelor's granting institution in the liberal arts mold. In that context, Nicholas Rowland (a sociology prof.) and and I have been co-running an undergraduate research lab here for the past three years.
We have supervised a massive number of student presentations at conferences (N > 30) at venues ranging from regional meetings like the Pennsylvania Sociology Society to international meetings like Developmental Psychobiology. We also have quite an impressive number of publications with student authors. Most of the lab projects are student driven, so we have given student's CV lines on studies ranging from video games and violent behavior, to U.S. attitudes towards atheists, to the founding of African American Studies at Penn State, and more, plus a good number of book reviews in professional journals. This while I have maintained my own line of research regarding Ecological Psychology and New Realism, and Nicholas become a key player in Actor-Network Theory and started making waves in the State Theory literature.
At any rate... Recently, there have been efforts to re-emphasize the academic and educational sides of Penn State, and part of this is a "Faces of Penn State" campaign, highlighting prized faculty and staff. In the latest round of updates to come out today, they Nicholas and I. My pic is 4th in on the top line, with a direct link here. They solicited nominations over the summer, and... despite being on a branch campus... Nicholas and I received the most nominations of anyone. This is a major accomplishment for us, but also a crucial step forward for the promotion of research on our campus.
So... there it is... shameless self promotion... but after all the hard work we have put into creating the lab, it is really nice to get some recognition. The Penn State slogan is "We are" "Penn State" (shouted in a two-part alternation). This is one of the first times, for me at least, that has seemed true.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Unifying Psychology: On framing a positive message
As some of you may know, I am editing a special issue of the Review of General Psychology. The focus is on potentially unifying theories. There are, of course, many past attempts to bring unity to the field. Most take two forms: First, there are the pipe dreams; bold visions from young Turks or senior scholars. Second, there are those who want us to give up the quest for a unified underlying theory and instead claim that we are already unified sufficiently by our agreed upon subject matter. The latter often come off as apologists, who hope we can learn to revel in our differences. Neither of these approaches is necessarily bad, but I am not sure another special issue with one of those focuses would be helpful, and suspected there was a better way to make progress.
Friday, September 28, 2012
Embodied Cognition and the Direction of Inquiry in Psychology
One aspect of the embodied cognition argument regards the direction in which psychology should proceed. My impression (from sparse readings of works from Plato through the middle ages) is that once upon a time you could start psychology at any point, by wondering about any interesting phenomenon, and proceeding from there however you wanted.
Sometime around Descartes, I’m not sure if he started it or just popularized it, everyone decided that you had to start by figuring out so-called higher mental functions. The idea was that if you got a handle on how that stuff worked, you would automatically understanding how lower mental functions. In those days, hierarchies of being were all the rage, so the higher vs. lower metaphor worked. The modern “offline” vs. “online” distinction, taken from the cog-psych computer metaphor, is basically the same thing. This was not a bad hypothesis, but it really hasn’t worked out. It is not clear that all of our studies of thinking, reasoning, planning, imagining, etc., over the past centuries have told us much about how behavior works and, worse, it is also unclear how much it has told us about thinking, reasoning, planning, and imagining.
Sometime around Descartes, I’m not sure if he started it or just popularized it, everyone decided that you had to start by figuring out so-called higher mental functions. The idea was that if you got a handle on how that stuff worked, you would automatically understanding how lower mental functions. In those days, hierarchies of being were all the rage, so the higher vs. lower metaphor worked. The modern “offline” vs. “online” distinction, taken from the cog-psych computer metaphor, is basically the same thing. This was not a bad hypothesis, but it really hasn’t worked out. It is not clear that all of our studies of thinking, reasoning, planning, imagining, etc., over the past centuries have told us much about how behavior works and, worse, it is also unclear how much it has told us about thinking, reasoning, planning, and imagining.
Monday, September 17, 2012
A Question Re: APS (Association for Psychological Science)
Dear Readers,
The Association for Psychological Science (APS) is holding its annual meeting in Washington DC this year, which makes it easy than usual for me to attend. I am generally not a fan of big conventions (c.f., prior comments on the APA convention). At smaller conferences you can meet new people, have lots of good unplanned conversations, and see lots of things you are interested in. In my general experience at big conferences, you can say "hi" to lots of people, but not really meet them; everything is too anonymous for unexpected good conversations; and there are tons of talks, but few are interesting. I am hoping for advice about whether or not I should give APS a try. In particular, I would like to know what types of positive experiences (if any) people have had there, and/or why you might think APS is worth prioritizing over other options.
Many thanks!
Eric
The Association for Psychological Science (APS) is holding its annual meeting in Washington DC this year, which makes it easy than usual for me to attend. I am generally not a fan of big conventions (c.f., prior comments on the APA convention). At smaller conferences you can meet new people, have lots of good unplanned conversations, and see lots of things you are interested in. In my general experience at big conferences, you can say "hi" to lots of people, but not really meet them; everything is too anonymous for unexpected good conversations; and there are tons of talks, but few are interesting. I am hoping for advice about whether or not I should give APS a try. In particular, I would like to know what types of positive experiences (if any) people have had there, and/or why you might think APS is worth prioritizing over other options.
Many thanks!
Eric
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Cheating... it just got much easier, and much harder
Fascinating things to think about in a just-released Chronicle article about cheating at Harvard: http://chronicle.com/article/Harvard-Cheating-Scandal/134160
Basically, it is suspected that a bunch of students violated policy by collaborating on a take home, open book, open notes, open internet exam. I'm not so much interested in the details of the case (it was a class in which students were encouraged to collaborate in groups across the semester, but then told to do the exam alone, but there is a grey are where you talk to people a little... but not too much... etc.). Instead, I want to think for a bit about the implications of the "open internet" clause in a "web 2.0" world. Here is the rub: Anything another student posts on the internet is now, by definition, openly available. This has profound implication for how we think about and evaluate cheating on out-of-class assignments, perhaps even undermining our standard criterion for cases when the internet is not allowed! It is almost as bad as the case in Roy Sorenson's insightful essay about what can happen when a professor gives "Permission to Cheat." Why does this such a mess, well:
Basically, it is suspected that a bunch of students violated policy by collaborating on a take home, open book, open notes, open internet exam. I'm not so much interested in the details of the case (it was a class in which students were encouraged to collaborate in groups across the semester, but then told to do the exam alone, but there is a grey are where you talk to people a little... but not too much... etc.). Instead, I want to think for a bit about the implications of the "open internet" clause in a "web 2.0" world. Here is the rub: Anything another student posts on the internet is now, by definition, openly available. This has profound implication for how we think about and evaluate cheating on out-of-class assignments, perhaps even undermining our standard criterion for cases when the internet is not allowed! It is almost as bad as the case in Roy Sorenson's insightful essay about what can happen when a professor gives "Permission to Cheat." Why does this such a mess, well:
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