Davood Gozli – Page 11

Efficiency, Contact, & Meaning

By Davood Gozli | 24/09/202101/10/2021 by Davood Gozli

Several recent incidents have made me think about efficiency and the desire for efficiency that appears so widespread and unconditional. You must have witnessed this desire in different forms. Students have repeatedly asked me how they could read or learn faster. Businesses want increased efficiency, automating or outsourcing steps that could be automated or outsourced, reducing the number of steps, streamlining, shortening the amount of time allocated to tasks, and increasing the outcome for the…

Reading Groups, Like-Mindedness, & Participation

By Davood Gozli | 03/09/202103/09/2021 by Davood Gozli

Intellect finds itself, not only in solitary activity, but also–perhaps primarily–in group settings. Even in adulthood, there are aspects of our intellect that remain invisible to us until we engage in the right conversation, or in the right playful mood, when we share the present moment with someone. If you have intellectual inclinations, you probably know the pleasure of conversation, including the simple pleasure of discussing a book in a group. This pleasure and the…

book review General Psychology Psychology in Everyday Life

Review of ‘The Scout Mindset’ by Julia Galef

By Davood Gozli | 17/08/202117/08/2021 by Davood Gozli

Recent books in popular psychology, and particularly those about our capacity for judgment and reasoning, don’t paint a flattering picture of our intellectual capacities. They argue that we deceive ourselves, that we become satisfied with a feeling of knowing rather than knowing, that we instrumentalize our capacity for reason to justify what we want (and what we want isn’t itself decided by reason), that we conform unthinkingly to established norms and group opinions. These arguments,…

Discourse General Psychology philosophy of science

What Is Science? Science versus Scientism

By Davood Gozli | 14/07/2021 by Davood Gozli

The 2018 volume, On Hijacking Science, edited by Edwin E. Gantt and Richard N. Williams, provides a good starting point in thinking about general questions about science, e.g., What is science? What are the differences, if any, between science and scientism? Why are there tensions between a scientific (scientistic) worldview and those grounded in older cultural traditions, such as religions? In this post I will only draw on three passages taken from the editors’ introductory…

book review critical psychology history of psychology

On Hijacking Science (E. E. Gantt & R. N. Williams)

By Davood Gozli | 10/07/202110/07/2021 by Davood Gozli

I have written a review and summary of this book on Medium. In future posts, I am planning to select specific passages from the book and explore questions regarding science, scientific communication, and scientism. This slim, engaging, and valuable book belongs in the book series, Advances in Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, edited by Brent D. Slife. It consists of eight chapters by various authors, in addition to a foreword by the series Editor, a preface by…