I arrived back in Macau last night. I started cleaning before starting to prepare my lectures. Mold everywhere due to humidity. It’s surprising how dirty a place can get in such a short span of time. And, yes, there were also three dead cockroaches. Why are they always upside down when found dead? Is it…
Dialogue
What we are doing continually in our lives is […] “encountering difference,” and then allowing the moral understandings of the other to place our own understandings into question. In this approach, we are continually tacking back and forth between our beliefs, commitments, perspectives, and moral understandings and those of others. It is that tacking back…
Marginal Figure
In early February, Peter Limberg and I discussed possible ideas for a writing collaboration. Peter is the friend I mentioned at the beginning of the post Margins & Vitality. The idea of writing about the Marginal Figure appealed to both of us. The article is now available on Medium. Peter runs the podcast, Intellectual Explorers’…
Data as License to Speak
During the TRACE workshop in Würzburg, I listened to a talk by Dr. Jakob Kaiser, a young and well-spoken cognitive neuroscientist based in Munich. Jakob gave a talk on sensory attenuation, i.e., reduced response/sensitivity to a stimulus, which can be observed for stimuli caused by oneself (this is why you cannot tickle yourself). Jakob argued…
Between Linguistic Necessity and Indeterminacy: Assessing Gergen’s (2008) Critique of Psychological Explanation
In a recent article, Kenneth Gergen (2018) offers a summary of his work on (and against) empirical research in psychology. The article is clearly written, and there are many positive things one could say about it. However, I will focus primarily on points with which I disagree. Gergen and I share common “enemies,” but I…