Wednesday Round Up #18

Experimental Philosophy

Joshua Knobe, Can A Robot, An Insect or God Be Aware?
Scientific American on experiments on our intuitions about emotions and intentions in non-humans and even corporations

Jonah Lehrer, God Is a Corporation?
The Frontal Cortex covers experimental philosophy

Vaughan Bell, The Science of Theory
Mind Hacks gets in on the game: testing philosophy of the mind

Morality

John Tierney, Deep Down, We Can’t Even Fool Ourselves
The double standard of morality revealed

L.L. Wynn, What Is a Prostitute?
Ethnographic research in Egypt places morality in context, in this case sex, family, and cash

Ted Fox, Welch and Coauthor Explore Ties Between Morality and Misconduct
Morality, social control, and deviance: looking for the synergy

David Sloan Wilson, Atheism as a Stealth Religion VI: Let’s Break Out the Good Stuff
From Sloan Wilson’s blog at The Huffington Post. This one covers Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart’s book, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide.

LizardBreath, Dirty, Disrespectful Outsiders
Nice critique of Jonathan Haidt and his moral psychology

The Brain

Abul Taher, Hey, Bashful—Hormone May Treat Shyness
Oxytocin nasal spray to boost your confidence? For a critique, see here.

Jonah Lehrer, Oxytocin
The good and the bad on recent research on the neurochemical de jour

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Anthropology and Social Design Round Up

John Sherry is an anthropologist who is also chair of the Department of Marketing at Notre Dame’s Mendoza School of Business. I had coffee the other day with John, and was struck by how similar some of our approaches are. What unites us is an interest in behavior, for me behavioral health and for John consumer behavior, and a belief that anthropology can help unite interdisciplinary understandings of behavior and experience.

John has several online papers that focus on experience, embodiment and context. First up is Speaking of Art as Embodied Imagination: A Multi-Sensory Approach to Understanding Sensory Experience (it’s a large pdf, give it a moment).

Another good one is Fruit Flies Like A Banana (Or, When Ripeness Is All): Meditation on Markets and Timescapes. And here’s a short piece on Sporting Sensation. For more, check out his online cv with pdf links.

I’ve also come across a new blog uiGarden, which is about “Weaving Usability and Cultures”. (I covered similar blogs on “anthropology, design, business” back in April). Several posts there at uiGarden caught my attention:

A View of the Future: Trends Research, Ethnography and Design
Why Do People Become Attached to Their Products
Story Telling
Design for Emotion: Ready for the Next Decade?

And now for a more traditional round-up:

Irene Guijt, An “Aha” Moment in the Development Sector
Stories and practical examples, not grand narratives, as making the difference

Jason Palmer, Interview: The Cellphone Anthropology
Interview with Jan Chipchase, bringing anthropology to cellphones everywhere (for more on Chipchase, see our own Cellphones Save the World.)

Dori Tunstall, Design Anthropology: What Can It Add to Your Design Practice?
“Anthropology is engaged with issues of the global flows of people and goods, human rights and social justice, global feminism, technology adoption, the social effects of the environmental degradation, and local sustainability practices—all issues that have become important to designers.”

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