Cognitive Science of Religion

Upon Reflection, Ep. 5: Reflective Reasoning For Real People (Dissertation Overview)

Welcome to Upon Reflection. In this episode, I review the major take-aways and findings from my dissertation titled, “Reflective Reasoning For Real People”. I explain what cognitive scientists mean by terms like “reflective reasoning”, how reflection is measured empirically, how reflection can either help or hinder our reasoning, how more reflective philosophers tend toward certain philosophical beliefs, and how reflection may help us retrain our implicit biases.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:53 — 29.1MB)

New paper: “Your Health vs. My Liberty”

Why did otherwise life affirming people flout public health recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Was it leaders’ messaging? For example, are “flatten the curve” graphs about statistical victims less effective than information about identifiable victims?
Was it people’s reasoning? Do some people not think carefully enough about public health? Might people who better at math better understand public health information involving concepts like exponential growth and probability?
Was it people’s philosophical preferences? Do some people just care more about preventing harm? Do others prioritize personal liberty over pubic health? Do people’s beliefs about science matter? Religion?

Michał Białek and I investigated. In short, we found that flouting public health recommendations was less about messaging or reasoning than philosophical beliefs, especially beliefs about our duties to others, liberty, and science. The paper is ~~under review~~ now published in Cognition. As always, you can find a free copy of the paper on my CV at byrdnick.com/cv. More details below.

A Dissertation About Reflective Reasoning in Philosophy, Morality, & Bias

One of the things that I worked on in 2018 was a dissertation about the roles of reflective reasoning in philosophy, morality, and bias. Pending a follow-up study for one chapter, every chapter is written and has enjoyed at least one round of comments—and some of the chapters are under review. As the chapters find homes in journals, I will be sure to post preprints and links to the online publication on my blog and in my social media feeds. So, ya know, follow those if you want more updates. In this post, I’ll give you drafts of the abstracts for each chapter, so that you can get a birds-eye view of the dissertation project.†

[Update: audio and video of the introduction to the dissertation defense is now available.]

Continue reading A Dissertation About Reflective Reasoning in Philosophy, Morality, & Bias

Are Atheists More Reflective Than Theists?

On Saturday, I was on the Veracity Hill Podcast talking about the evidence that atheists and agnostics reason more reflectively (i.e., make fewer errors) than theists.

The Discussion

What do we mean by ‘reflective’? And how do we measure reflection? Who counts as a theist? And how do we measure religiosity?
What do these findings about atheists and theists tell us about atheism and theism (if anything)? And how might further research answer hitherto unanswered questions about how atheists and theists reason?
What are some related findings? For instance, what does this have to do with other philosophical beliefs?

The Podcast

Continue reading Are Atheists More Reflective Than Theists?

Is Reflective Reasoning Supposed To Change Your Mind?

When you step back and question your beliefs and assumptions, do you expect to change your mind? Should you? I think that reflective reasoning is supposed to change our minds. But it might not change our beliefs. Sometimes reflection reinforces our beliefs. And sometimes reflection makes our beliefs more extreme or partisan. I’ll explain below. Continue reading Is Reflective Reasoning Supposed To Change Your Mind?

50+ Cognitive Science and/or Philosophy Blogs

Here is a list of cognitive science and/or philosophy blogs. Feel free to share it and/or suggest additions to the list. Continue reading 50+ Cognitive Science and/or Philosophy Blogs

Interview with ACI Scholarly Blog Index

I recently answered some questions from Traci Hector at ACI Scholarly Blog Index. More about the interview and about ACI below.

What We Talked About

My experience of studying religion.
Why philosophy led me to ‪cognitive science.
How intuition is related to beliefs about god and science.
Computational corpus linguistics and how philosophers use it.
How I use blogging and ‎social media‬ for my research.
My thoughts on podcasts.
About blogging as an academic.

The full interview is here: http://aci.info/2016/04/27/aci-interview-with-scholarly-blogger-phd-candidate-nick-byrd/

About ACI Scholarly Blog Index

…an editorially created and curated index of scholarly social media. Authors are selected for inclusion based on their academic credentials as well as the scope and quality of their writing. Metadata, taxonomies, and proprietary Author Profile Cards are appended to each publication. An elegantly sophisticated search interface easily surfaces highly relevant articles. Post-search filtering allows researchers to further hone in on appropriate articles. ACI Scholarly Blog Index is free to use.

Check out ACI Scholarly Blog Index at acindex.com

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