The hosts of Very Bad Wizards have an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics, examining the fears that drive human behavior and debating the significance of a character called 'the bad mind'. They also address the need to discuss the removal of a university head for political reasons.
David and Tamler are back for the new year and one of our resolutions was to do more episodes on William James. Today we talk about his account of ‘Attention’ from his 1890 volume The Principles of Psychology – another remarkably prescient chapter that still feels more than relevant today. What is attention and how does it function in the mind? What accounts for the different ways that we attend to things? Does attention help to shape or construct our reality? What is attention’s connection to the will? Does James anticipate predictive coding theory?
Plus we discuss the removal of the head of a renowned university for reasons that have nothing to do with the mission of higher learning.
Episode Links
Chancellor of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Fired [nbc.com]
William James chapter on Attention from Principles of Psychology (1890) [yorku.ca]